Flora Fauna Dinner

Where I Will Be for The Rest of My Life

2012-02-11T10:58:00.005Z

This used to be our fireplace but this week it was blocked up with a piece of slate, the surround removed and the brick plastered over ready for our new pet*. Open fires are not economical or practical in a Smoke Control city and in any case there is another open fireplace in the front room, but to burn wood we need a stove. It is blissful though makes watching everyone's favourite Danish dramas tricky because one keeps looking at the flames and missing the subtitles. (Solution: learn Danish?)

As you can understand, it is no longer possible to be not stoveside at all. Occasionally a lap top is available in the vicinity but otherwise, who cares? There are flames here, people. FLAMES. I need to watch them.

News in brief: I have decided not to replace the chickens but concentrate on building the pond* and an autumn weekend has been booked in the Dark Sky Park for me, my sister and my mother; the latter is seventy later in the year and announced yesterday - revealing from whom I have inherited my Mrs Malaprop tendencies - that she has just joined a 'Sambuca' class...

*Seriously, it is the way forward: fire and water. Ash and algae are much easier to deal with than incontinence and infestations.

Logs Not Dogs

2012-02-07T16:43:00.000Z

The ferrets are in charge of keeping the new log pile rodent-free. Atticus the kitten, regrettably, has bigger fish [birds] to fry.

I was in bed with Jon Kabat-Zinn (on my ipod) trying to mindfully meditate my way through a particularly dark morning of the soul when a large wading bird ran down the hall. It was, of course, hotly pursued by Atticus who had dragged it though the cat flap having shrugged off his 8th collar at the weekend and been at large and bell-less ever since.

There is no photo because the bird - which didn't quite match a curlew but was similar - was alive and pecking, with no visible injury, so was rereleased as soon as I rounded him up from the study. Atticus, hyped up and furious, is still confined to the house in his brand new four-bell collar. Every so often he mounts a fruitless attack on the cat flap and yowls disgustedly. He cannot understand my obvious inability to gratefully recognise his catches as a) the very meaning of feline existence and b) dinner.

(The other night I retired early in order to properly work myself up to a night of insomnia and dark morning of the soul etc, when a surreptitious crunching noise came from under the bed. Once Atticus had been chased out, all that remained were a few feral pigeon feathers, some blood smears and the granary contents of a crop. Given that he is locked inside between dusk and dawn, presumably he had brought it in some hours previously and been feasting ever since. It is absolute carnage. I see now, why some people are so anti-cat.)

Let us not speak of the s**w. Let us not speak of how one must endure short days and a lack of Krispy Kreme here in the frozen north WHILE LONDONERS GET SNOW AND WE DON'T. Also, southerners? ZOMG FOUR INCHES OF SNOW!!!!! is not actually that much. So there.

Goat-walking

2012-02-03T09:24:00.001Z

Well that was Imbolc been and gone. In this house it is filtered down to Valentine's Day and Pancake Day anyway: all milky goodness. In any case, we don't want to get excited about the hearth too soon lest it put the mockers on our scheduled stove installation next week.

Snow and temperatures of -11°C are forecast this weekend but surely optimistically? One lives in hope.

On the other hand, thirty each of raspberry canes and asparagus crowns have just been ordered and won't be going anywhere.

Here is an urban pygmy goat for Imbolc. My younger son got to take him for a walk.

I would rather have a goat than a dog and pointed out that his field is smaller than our garden. Naysayers pointed out that our garden would then look like that field...

Your Chicken Wisdom Sought

2012-01-31T10:08:00.003Z

silkie boys, Marmite and The Crow, at 3 months

The silkie cockerels should be moving on to their new home soon and I am intending to send Sam the Eagle, the partridge pullet, with them. I could keep her and buy her a new flock but a) she would be outnumbered which could cause problems, b) having giant Marmite* around has given me a taste (not literally) for a bigger bird and silkie hens are a bit small to mix well with larger ones and c) I am not wholly convinced of the practicality of silkies anyway since this one can barely see and sometimes gets soaked to the skin just drinking from the water hopper, necessitating a blow dry.

Sam the Eagle, blow dry

So, I am back to the same three options I started with before I got my Pekins or hatched my silkies:

1. Pekins - PROS: very pretty (see blog header); don't trash the garden; don't fly away. CONS: more fluff, less egg; always going broody which dramatically reduces their egg production; small birds, small eggs.

2. Scots Dumpies - PROS: very rare breed; big bodies but short legs reducing their garden-digging/fence-jumping potential. CONS: not the best of layers; not very colourful.

3. Hybrids (would have a Columbian Blacktail, a Rhode Rock and a Mendlesham Blue) - PROS: nice and big; fantastic layers; I, personally, like the old-fashioned way they look. CONS: garden-wrecking/fence-jumping hooligans more suited to a larger area with less fruit and veg in it?

What to do? Pekins are more of a pet, hybrids could be more of a pain. Dumpies might occupy the middle ground but they are expensive, hard to find and (relatively unimportantly but still) black and white are my least favourite chicken colourways. Any other suggestions? Or positive experiences with free ranging hybrids in edible food forests?

*It has also made me love cockerels. He has far more personality than the hens and he is big and chunky and tolerates stroking even if I haven't got mealworms. If we ever move to a shack in the woods, I am keeping a rooster. I'm not hatching out any more chicks because I have got far too attatched to him, but I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to keep a cockerel for a while. Of course, once he gets to 4-6 months and starts crowing the street down/leaping on me, I might be more receptive to coq au vin...

Desperate Measures

2012-01-30T08:34:00.000Z

In the last 48 hours the husband has baked:

two dozen brownies

a dozen meringues

two loaves of bread

and made buttery Hollandaise to pour over salmon and creamy bread sauce to pour over pheasants.

We do not have visitors.

You would think it counterproductive to keep giving your wife so much food, wouldn't you? Maybe he is a secret Feeder? Or maybe he has only ever been in relationships with women who either possessed self-control or ran marathons rather than just eating them? Maybe it's because a mouth cannot simultaneously fit around a cake and nag?

I have been weakened by a particularly nasty strain of essay-deadline and have had to lay in bed with the lap top, averaging 173 words for every 850 kcals I eat.

In the end we had to go for a brisk walk up Arthur's Seat to prevent my arteries from entirely solidifying overnight.

It may be necessary to go for a run this week.

Jonathan

2012-01-25T11:00:00.006Z

This is a live adult seagull in my friend's house.

It is there because her kitten, the littermate of my kitten - Atticus - both having been born to her cat and some local semi-feral Tom, caught it and brought it in through the bathroom window.

It suffered only some loss of feathers and dignity and then strutted about my friend's kitchen terrorising her third cat, an elderly gentleman, before being let out the front door and flying off.

I came home from hearing this tale to find a decapitated mouse, and its brains, smeared all over the kitchen floor, Atticus licking his lips next to it.

(My mother is cat-sitting when we go to London in spring and has already had to make an arrangement with the neighbour's whereby they will be alerted by her screams if rodent/bird removal is necessary.)

It is to be hoped that Atticus never gets a seagull because a) I love seagulls very much and b) I have always wanted to raise an orphaned/injured one, which could well resort in divorce and my children leaving home (except surely they would all come round to it and learn to LOVE the giant webbed-footed chap as a - albeit bit pecky - member of the family...?)

Pond in a Cold Climate

2012-01-20T16:19:00.039Z

This month has been half-narcolepsy, half-insomnia. It was my intention to read more, write less and listen more, talk less but the pendulum may have swung too far in that direction; my appetite for Danish television drama and Nancy Mitford* is seemingly insatiable. Lying awake the other night I found myself hearing the gentle babble of Scandinavian vowel sounds mingling with exclamations of: 'You really are the most terrific Hon!' and I'm afraid there is nothing more intelligible than that to be found in my head at the moment.

*My mother has joined our reading group which now makes it the same as our holidaying trio so I have named us Hags, Mags and Bags in homage to my favourite Radio 4 comedy**.
**Although I should declare here that I am in love with Mr Gently Benevolent.

However, I have resumed gardening and that is a great joy. The garden is always completely ignored in the run up to Christmas but afterwards - there it is again: Hello trees and bushes and impossibly resilient spinach!

Having changed bedrooms, attempts have been made to rouse me from my S.A.D.-induced Danish detective/upper class romance coma by pulling up all the blinds on that side of the house and letting in some light (festering in basements with the curtains drawn is more my natural style but...). Of course doing so merely revealed pitch black Scotland in January, but it did also highlight the urgent need for something to be done to the side garden.

The husband having cleared the dog roses and brambles -at least to ground level - last weekend, it was possible to map out an area for the pond and plan what to grow around it. After last year's £15 marrow horror it will be necessary to supply him with home-grown chutney ingredients so courgettes will go against the wall on the right, in the sunniest part of what is a very shady area. It may be too shady for beans, almost certainly for corn, but perhaps it's worth trying if only for my love of theThree Sisters method. It may, in fact, be too shady for the pond itself but another year of careful sunlight monitoring is too long to wait; it can always be filled in if it doesn't work. The triumph of hope over experience etc.

On the opposite side, to the left, a variety of my beloved native and damp-tolerant shade-loving ferns will be planted and at the far end the fertility patch comfrey will be allowed to spread as far as Rosie's grave, the cairn on which can provide hidey-holes for any amphibians sufficiently evolved to scale the five foot wall currently separating them from my garden. Frogs, toads and newts are my favourites and bests but none will be forcibly introduced from my neighbours' ponds because:

Atticus the kitten is a vicious killing machine who deposited a dead greenfinch (Atticus Finch indeed) fledgling under our bed the other day. A girl can go right off cats, you know. Dead mice are greeted with enthusiasm here and a blind eye is turned to mauled wood pigeons and decapitated juvenile starlings but the murder of finches, amphibians and bats is VERBOTEN. This is his first aberration; perhaps he just needs it explaining to him again. Maybe with fewer syllables. He is kept in from dusk until dawn and wears a sleighful of bells on his collar but that kitten's father was obviously a no-good homicidal alley cat who spent his nights slaughtering wildlife and knocking up tabbies. For sure he was a good looking son-of-a-queen but he has A LOT TO ANSWER FOR. So do the MEN who made me love cats in the first place after twenty-nine years of being A DOG WOMAN. Grrr.

Lunching

2012-01-17T10:23:00.007Z

So I went to Browns with some lovely ladies on Saturday. Last time we went I was really self-conscious of the fact that everyone else was having afternoon tea, baked Camembert and cocktails while I had a virgin mojito and mint tea in the manner of a) someone with an eating disorder or b) a joyless bore. This time I looked at the menu online first and found a Meat Platter that had non-dairy, non-gluten and FUN PERSON HERE written all over it, so I was prepared.

Earlier, the husband and I had shared Hasselback potatoes and the like at Joseph Pearce's for lunch. That place is so family-friendly as to make one feel positively barren on entering without a double-buggy and a newborn. The husband and I were child-free though and I think we might choose somewhere that felt less like a creche next time, unless we are with Dr & Mrs S and Baby Early in which case it would be perfect.

After that we went to see The Iron Lady which I am still processing but mainly what I am left with is the feeling of having been manipulated into empathising, through the human universals of ageing and love, with a singularly unpleasant individual who screwed up my country and is not a reason to feel glad to be a woman.

Anyway, I then bounded into Browns to find people had gone all January and were ordering cups of hot water and plates of green beans without butter! My Meat Platter was not required! I scaled down to a starter plate of scallops with my virgin mojito, which now seemed positively hedonistic. Cocktails, Camembert and cream teas did make an appearance later though not on my plate and, in any case, eating and drinking was very much secondary to the conversation, in which I found a lovely rural home for at least one of the silkie cockerels.

Yesterday I got more lady talk and more lunching when I went to visit Mrs S and Baby Early. I had to catch the Penzance train but get off ten and a half hour's before its final destination. (One day I am staying on though: I love Cornwall) It was a beautiful, freezing day with a heavy frost and after a walk to the sea to say hello to the resident seal, we took Baby Early for his first cafe visit. It's now three months since his premature birth but he is devleopmentally still only three weeks old; either way, he is gorgeous. It felt like the beginning of a new era of day trips.

Cold again today but both ferrets and chickens seem warm enough in their piles of bedding and the ferrets are enjoying spending more time loose in the garden. I won't let the chooks free-range until it is considerably warmer.

My name is Flora Fauna Dinner and I am a dog addict. It is 53 days since my last dog.

Cold Front

2012-01-15T14:57:00.004Z

Look what was hiding under my wind-ravaged Egremont Russet! A snowdrop! They were no-shows last year so I planted another batch though I can't remember where they came from. Probably it is documented somewhere here under a post with a cryptic title and the helpful tag 'flora', along with two hundred others. Anyway, I hadn't noticed them at all until I got down on my knees to inspect how badly the tree trunk had rubbed itself raw against its stake - despite my attempt to cushion it with a pair of tights - and there they were, offsetting my gardening fail.

Bulb shoots have been coming up since November along with blossom on the apple and elderflower - it's been so mild - but last night was the first proper hard frost of the winter. I have lost all hope of snow even though there are months and months of winter yet. Indeed, it would not be such a tragedy to miss it this year since we had another livestock shuffle last weekend. The amount of chicken dust settling thickly in the study made me fear for the children's lungs so now that old skinny Lynx has gone - the remaining two ferrets were moved into the old outdoor chicken coop with their numerous blankets and thick winter coats of fur and fat, leaving the shed free for the chickens who moved in after I had insulated it with a bale each of straw and sawdust. The ferrets curl up every evening in their nest box but the chickens must still be forced into their roost or they will just stand in the open all night, like quail. Everyone is getting extra rations.

The husband is out contemplating a log shelter as there is talk of our wood burner arriving soon. This might not be for the best since no further encouragement is really needed for us to occupy the sofa, watching or reading. Very little else is being done beyond the bare necessities.

We have succumbed to peer pressure to watch more Danish drama: Borgen. And we thought our coalition was complicated? Also, have finally got round to:
Freakonomics;
Schindler's List;
the final season of The West Wing (having cleverly synchronised it with real life);
and awaiting the last disc of The Tudors (please make it stop...also please make Suffolk's wife sleep with him again so he'll get a haircut)
plus I read JoJo Moyes's The Last Letter From Your Lover - while awaiting the rest of the Mitford trilogy for my-SMS-based-reading-club-of-two - which reminded me why I never read books like that and drove me straight into the completely Platonic, semantically soothing, metaphoric arms of Stephen Pinker.

We did make it to the Dog & Cat Home, ostensibly to deliver Rosie's old coat, actually to look at dogs. One closely resembled a miniature version of Santa's Little Helper, with a cartoon-like nose that protruded way beyond his lower jaw - I loved! - but he had already been reserved. Anyway, it doesn't do to fall in love so quickly; one should play the dog field for a while especially when one isn't really ready to commit yet. I don't want a rebound grief dog. But I do want a dog eventually...except for when the cats leap onto the bed in the morning. Then I realise that the cats will never come near me again if there is a dog, and that is a shame because I have really rather come around to cats. Hmmm.

Hmmm also to Scottish Independence. Exciting and scary, like most changes. Don't know if I will come around to that.

Fiction IRL

2012-01-07T15:18:00.018Z

Have I mentioned how much I loved Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry?

My sister and I have started a Reading Group by texting. Actually it is more of a Reading Pair and, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure she knows she's in it either, but she is. So far we have read Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would from the awful chick-lit cover. It was a relief to have Linda's life filtered through Fanny and made me much less miserable than India Knight's Comfort and Joy in which it is the narrating heroine we are trying to relate to over the joyful Christmas following the collapse of her second marriage. I read it on Christmas Eve and - despite all the funny bits - was utterly depressed (and completely puzzled by all the 'heart-warming' reviews), being, as I am, a little sensitive about serial divorce. Chasing it with Elizabeth Gilbert's Commited: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage helped though: an unexpectedly lovely and soothing book, especially for divorced romantics. It seems people would rather read about exciting travels and the first throes of passion but I am all about the kitchen sink. It's escapsim from my glamorous party-party lifestyle. Next: the other two Nancy Mitford's. I do hope they won't disappoint.

My own dear husband is having some sort of mild midlife crisis that has involved him joining Twitter. Of course, he will never actually tweet. He might if there is cricket on but that will be so boring as to not count anyway. I had got Grace Dent's How to Leave Twitter: My Time as Queen of the Universe and Why This Must Stop out the library at the same time and there was nothing in it that tempted me to join my spouse in his new endeavour. Also I like that I am now the only person in the house without a Twitter account. Me: a former social-networking addict!

It's not that I haven't been sorely tempted at times, mainly because I feel very deeply that Caitlin Moran should be my BFF and because I want to spend hours trying to think of witty things to say to Grace Dent so she'll like me. But it is for the above reasons and many more that I have restrained myself (before a judge has to).

Anyway, having been a relatively early adopter of several sites, Myspace and - does anyone remember? - Friendster spring to mind (plus I must admit to feeling slightly disappointed that the moment I finally got an academic email address, Facebook opened to everyone), I was fairly burnt out by the time everyone started tweeting. I had been blogging at somewhere or other for nearly ten years and made some very very good friends through forums, some that I now see regularly in 3D, some that I still haven't met in the flesh after nearly a decade of cat lolz. It's not an exaggeration to say that finding my people online is what led to the dissolution of my first marriage (if not the monasteries). Then I met my second husband on the Guardian Soulmates... (and the only mortifying thing about that is the fact I LOATHE the word 'soulmates' with an absolute and all-consuming passion far greater than any love) and no longer had quite such an enormous time slot available for the internets because it turns out you can be married to someone with whom you can have really quite long and stimulating conversations. #thingsiwishihadknownat22

Now my mum has just gone out and bought a laptop rather than wasting anymore time fretting over her internet virginity. She has sent me three emails already today. She lives a few hundred yards from my house. She still can't find the question mark key but has been pottering around the webs and would like you to know that I don't get any of my filthy, slatternly, foul-mouthed habits - as displayed shamelessly here - from her. I sent her a link to the Soulmates search results of gentlemen up to 100 years of age within twenty miles. I'm going to find me a new daddy! But not one who outlives her and takes my inheritance!

Must really stop eating chocolate again because the caffeine from the sheer tonnage I am consuming is causing me to be awake at all hours (like half past eleven for Christ's sake!) Yesterday the husband and I decided to swap our bedrooms so that we no longer have the tiniest room in the house, where we have to take it in turns to get dressed because there is only floor space for one person to stand up at a time. Now after much straining and panting under giant bed frames (makes a change), we are in the former spare room which is much bigger but Baltic. After that we watched the first four episodes of the first series of The Killing back to back. I want to be Sarah Lund so badly. But with slightly better parenting skills which I suppose is unrealistic.

Anyway, flora, fauna, dinner etc: I have been ripping up old dog rose bushes, pictured above, and am torn to shreds but it was good to be in the garden again. It was good just to be outside without a force ten gale and torrential rain. There are literally dozens of slates and tiles everywhere and the roofers are coming next week.

The husband returns to work on Monday after his lengthy Christmas break, so it's back to skool, no more second adult in the house, no more chocolates for breakfast. But at least I can ~~lie around in my pyjamas~~ take short breaks from educating the children to the highest possible academic standards and watch the endless Jane Austen adaptions that I Virgin-boxed over Christmas. I am coming round to male-preferenced drama though - I LOVED Apocalypse Now and The Hurt Locker.

I am so completely bored of writing essays. God, how do people ever get PhDs? I mean practically everyone I know has a bloody PhD - think of the endless essays they must have written! I am still hundreds of thousands of words away from even getting my first (and last, I assure you) degree. Perhaps it is because I have been dragging it out for most of my adulthood and have now quite LOST THE WILL TO REFERENCE? More likely it is my lifelong BONE-IDLENESS which, before she emails me again, is another thing I should point out that I do not get from my mother!

Of Dogs and Men

2012-01-05T15:13:00.001Z

Is that not the most beauteous, the most elegant, the most regal dog you have ever seen? True, shortly after this freeeze-frame she rolled in some fox shit and then ran into a bog and refused to come out so that I had to shout sweary words at her like that Fenton-yelling man in Richmond Park, but luckily this was all before YouTube and camera phones were invented thus no loss of dignity for either of us.

This photo is so old that I had to SCAN it onto the computer because it was PRE-DIGITAL. I wanted a picture of Rosie for my wall, one where she isn't looking like she's about to keel over at any moment which rules out all those taken since the digital age.

This one would make a good oil painting I think.

Unfortunately, what with the enlargement I had printed of fox-snack chickens Dora and Pol, I fear the house may start to look a bit eccentric (because it's the photos of animals on the wall that are the issue here - right? - not the disabled ferret being hand-fed a liquid diet in the hall or the THREE LIVE ROOSTERS in the study...) in the manner of the lovely lady I bought the silkie chicks from who had framed photos of her favourite ram everywhere.

Unfortunately too, I am completely obsessed with obtaining another dog. Obsessed. I refreshed the rescue web page 974 times yesterday afternoon and there was still only Diesel the child-munching mastiff-x. Where are all these people who got puppies for Christmas and didn't realise about the pooing? I am here! Bring me your pooey puppies!

I would ideally like a Scottish deerhound but they don't fit on the bus and I can't afford to feed them unless I rehome one of my kids. Any lurcher would do but they have a tendency to eat chickens, cats etc. So in deference to the kids and cats I have now honed down my search to: anything medium-sized that isn't mental. This would seem to rule out 100% of dogs I have seen so far which is probably for the best; my record with dogs and husbands is abysmal.

Billy No Mates

2012-01-05T09:56:00.000Z

No like January

Going Grey

2012-01-03T13:18:00.001Z

I have been meaning to take a photo of this sign's makeover for well over a year. It was only when I did that I noticed how the photo also provides a snapshot of daytime Scottish winter light levels. It has looked like this all day for weeks. It's no wonder some of us incline towards the depressive alcoholism.

Anyway, the sign always makes me happy. As does Gillian Anderson's Miss Havisham whose style, accommodation and voice I am intending to base my third age persona on, if not my relationships.

Today the damp greyness is overshadowed by yet more gales. The winds are stronger than ever (much stronger than Hurricane Bawbag). Bits of our neighbours' roofs litter our front and back gardens and there are dents and cracks where tiles have smashed into doors and walls. The roofs surrounding us have lost big pieces of coping and leading but we are only down a few tiles and some of the ferret shed roof so far (once again the ferrets will be able to stargaze tonight). We haven't been out except to retrieve the wheelie bin from where it had sped on its side down the road. I had to phone my mother and instruct her not to leave the house but doubtless she will be on the news later having been blown over to Fife on a particularly strong gust. She won't be told. Elderly people. Of course, I myself will need to take my cold and cough out for a little look at the sea later but that is for journalistic purposes...

Pheasant Plucking

2012-01-02T16:52:00.008Z

Pheasant

Sunrise on the first day of 2012 was heralded by an ominous cock crowing from the study next to our bedroom. Marmite had chosen the new year to confirm his long-suspected maleness. The crow was so sweet and adolescent - like a voice breaking. Farming is not for me, I fear. I'd rather hunt a bird I've never met.

Marmite shares many features with The Crow that Sam the Eagle is lacking, namely:

prominent comb
streaming head feathers
raised tail feathers
feistiness
disinterest in mealworms

So I am resigned to being left once again with one lone hen. Here concludes my experiment in winter urban chicken hatching using a three egg incubator. I haven't yet decided whether in spring I will keep Sam the Eagle and buy her a point-of-lay sister (which someone else has had to cull cockerels to raise) or take her to join a friend's flock and be chickenless. It is ironic that what has left me feeling disinclined towards urban poultry keeping is not vegetarianism but sexism. I find it hard to warm to a system that puts such a low value on one gender, even if it's mirrored in nature (I assume jungle fowl cockerels just keep their numbers down by fighting to the death?)

On the plus side, battery hen cages are banned so conditions are improving slighty for commercial egg-laying birds. The girls anyway.

Elsewhere, we put two pheasants (one of each sex...) in the freezer and I made stock - for Jerusalem artichoke boulangere-style - out of a motley assortment of frozen carcasses I unearthed there. I also made an inventory of the freezer's contents in an attempt to live off it in January and recoup some housekeeping. It's amazing what one will do when another essay deadline looms.

Tonight we are having pea and ham soup with the leftovers of the New Year's Day ham. I did stay up until midnight on the 31st amidst much grumbling but ultimately shamed by tv footage of antipodeans who had come all the way to my city to celebrate Hogmanay whilst I couldn't even be bothered to stay awake an extra couple of hours* and see our council tax going up in spectacular smoke from the comfort of ~~my own home~~ the pavement outside my house. As the first rumblings of distant warfare began I ran outside barefoot in pyjamas to see the fireworks then, as usual, became greatly animated and full of the spirit of Hogmanay for a full six minutes before retiring immediately to bed. It would have been a terrible shame to miss them which, I think is my conclusion every year but I forget it again until about 10pm on the next New Year's Eve.

By the morning I had come down with a terrible cold (bare feet, t-shirt, Scottish winter, middle of night etc). The teenager stumbled in at 2.30am but unscathed and not discernibly drunk.

The decorations are down, the tree is out for recycling, the sprout peelings are in the wormery and I am vowing never ever to eat chocolate again. All is as it should be in January. Happy New Year!*

*Apparently there are people who regularly stay up until midnight or later. Shocking is all I can say on that matter.

What Is New About It Anyway?

2011-12-29T15:59:00.002Z

I have never roasted a turkey two days running before.

It was better the second day with Dr & Mrs Suz and Baby Early and with spiced butter on the breast and the Tudor stuffing cooked inside the bird rather than as balls. Also: I much prefer my Jerusalem artichokes peeled.

Unfortunately though, on the second day I set light to my hand with an exploding box of Cook's matches and had to spend dinner with it held under the cold tap. But the leftovers were good.

I tried some purple sprouts with the usual green ones. They looked pretty.

The husband pointed out that it is only by cooking the Christmas dinner more regularly that one improves it by tinkering. And so I have started a family recipe book in which to note our preferences. So far I have his Christmas cake (well received by huntin' shootin' neighbour who immediately reciprocated with a brace of pheasants), Tudor stuffing, bread sauce and turkey pie (yesterday's dinner; turkey curry ~~buffet~~ tonight) recipes, my/Delia's braised red cabbage and mojito cheesecake recipes, our wedding brownies, Dr & Mrs Suz's wedding cakes, the banana pancakes we have on Saturday mornings and our version of the raw chocolate ganache tart. I really need my friend Kevin's friend Bo's dad's friend's eastern North Carolinian pulled pork recipe that was on a printed out email blue tacked to the inside of a kitchen cupboard door in my old house. The New Year ham recipe is still to come too.

Of course, like all right-thinking people, I loathe New Year's Eve* and would prefer to go to bed at 10pm wearing ear plugs, but New Year's Day is fine. Particularly because I will spring out of bed at 6am unhungover and there will be the smell of glazed ham baking. And in Scotland it is a two day holiday (mainly because everyone has a two day hangover).

But this is all a sleight of hand to distract one from the reality that Christmas is over and it is JANUARY, bleakest of months. Except perhaps for February. So that's always cheering. That's right! I have slumped into S.A.D. melancholia, right on cue after Boxing Day!

There is still no wood burning stove. We don't go to London until March.We will have fully grown chickens shitting in our study for at least three more months. Call the wahmbulance! First World middle class emergency! *beats self about head so you don't have to*

Also, one of our ferrets died in his sleep on Christmas night. Dr Lynxenstein had perhaps the most complex personal narrative of any of our companion animals. After sustaining a mild head injury from the pantry door two Christmases ago, Lynx - a mild-mannered and unprepossessing silver rescue ferret - developed the alternate persona of Dr Lynxenstein and truly believed - quite convincingly actually - that he had invented all things, processes and states of being that exist. He was also very fond of being held like a baby by the teenager and sucking on the knots of his hoody. RIP Dr Lynxenstein.

*Reasons:

1. association with parties - who really likes parties?

2. expectation of drunkeness - I CANNOT BEAR drunk people

3. ghastly pressure to have 'fun', whatever that is

4. occurrence at night - don't do nights

5. ludicrous importance placed on time, down to the second

6. pressure to be doing something significantly 'special' at midnight, as if were a bloody proposal of marriage

7. unrealistic hopes of flawless new life and self beginning halfway through mid-season piss up

8. lack of culinary tradition

9. as we can see, I am the world's most boring and curmudgeonly old bag

On the plus side, I like the fireworks and I especially like the fact that in Edinburgh you do not have to make any effort to track midnight's approach for the ground will tremble with gunpowder when the clock strikes, as though the very Earth were announcing the new year. On GMT anyway.

Perhaps by my forties I will have found my inner reveller? Perhaps I could make it my New Year's Resolution? *dry heave*

Prep

2011-12-24T15:55:00.003Z

The beauty of my husband's cake implies a cool tranquility which is not to be found in our kitchen currently.

For some reason I have decided that this is the year we must be ruthlessly efficient about advance preparations. God knows why, because we have absolutely no guests (ex-husband aside) and not even any presents other than stocking fillers (the kids had enormous joint Christmas presents on their birthdays in autumn) so there isn't going to be anything else to do all day.

On the other hand, nobody wants to dig up Jerusalem artichokes on Christmas Day, especially since the delegating of said task today led to a massive screaming* match from which I learnt a) just dig your own artichokes in future and b) if you are apoplectically angry, digging helps. Anyway, there was a good crop. Much bigger specimens than last year and very deep down, deeper than a spade's depth. They will be roasted tomorrow.

I cooked the chestnuts and bacon in advance, to be added - with mustard and tarragon - to the sprouts tomorrow, which I am just about to peel in front of E.T. (incredibly the husband has never seen it). There then followed a period of lengthy sulking** and resentment** when it became apparent that, in addition to a reluctance to dig root vegetables, neither of my sons has bought or made any of us anything by way of present. I wouldn't mind but one of them is fifteen years old and managed to make exquisite Christmas baked goods gift bags for all his friends...

My/Delia's braised red cabbage and apple is slow cooking, I've done the cranberry sauce and the husband has iced his second Christmas cake as a present for our huntin' fishin' neighbour who has given us pheasants and salmon and cod this past year. A salmon needs to go in its kettle for dinner tonight too.

We are cooking exactly the same roast turkey, home-made Tudor stuffing, chipolatas, sprouts, red cabbage, roast potatoes, parsnips, carrots, Jerusalem artichokes, cranberry and bread sauces lunch again on Boxing Day when Dr & Mrs Suz and Mr Early hope to make their inaugural visit chez nous as a family. Leftovers will need to be put back a day and then there will be double.

I wish every one of our friends and family members were going to drop by tomorrow for a declassé snowball and a mango chutney-stuffed date wrapped in bacon. (Maybe not dinner because we only have a ten seater table...) I love you! Mwah! (*swigs cooking sherry* etc)

*me

**me

Christmas Spirit

2011-12-24T15:30:00.001Z

On my way to the supermarket today I saw that a festive notice, tied with jaunty yellow ribbon and covered in Santas, had been strung upon each and every lampost all along the street.

I stopped to see what joyful greeting it did bear:

Commendable use of Scots but marks off for missing apostrophe.

Merry Christmas to you!

Sugar and Butter and Hard Liquor

2011-12-21T19:00:00.002Z

I have never really come to terms with pudding on Christmas Day. Perhaps it is because I would happily eat a pudding for breakfast, lunch and dinner most days that I am not particularly excited about it on a day that I have already eaten an actual lunch of several kilos of meat and roast veg covered in bread sauce and gravy. More likely it is because I have been stealing the kids' Terry's Chocolate Oranges, Matchmakers, Toffifee, Ferrero Rocher, Just Brazils and After Eights since 6am and am repulsed by the idea of more chocolate.

I loathe all the traditional Christmas sweetmeats due to my contempt for dried fruit and I cannot bear the amount of steam a boiling Christmas pudding produces for hours so partakers have theirs microwaved (*shudders*) at my mother's on Boxing Day. They are free to consume their bodyweight in mince pies on the big day itself though.

Growing up, an essential accompaniement to both mince pies and pudding was brandy or rum butter. My dad always made this, sitting in his chair in the living room, and taught me at an early age how to mix the icing sugar into the butter and flavour with spirits. I recall it required a great deal of tasting and not a little swigging. After some years of not really understanding how brandy butter fitted into the Christmas of a non-pie/pudding eater I have now realised that the answer was obvious all along: after the turkey I will just serve myself a discreet bowl of it and consume on its own with a spoon. Let's not faff around with fruit and flour - let's just get down to the hardcore.

If little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice, then sugar and butter and hard liquor - that's what grown women are made of.

Silkies at about 10 weeks

2011-12-20T14:53:00.000Z

Something About Porridge

2011-12-12T19:44:00.007Z

I am too drugged with carbohydrates to record anything of note. Also, I have had two whiskies in seven days. And the camera on my phone no longer works.

Still, I finally found more of my favourite ever Christmas decoration with the search term 'silver wire star garland' which was obvious when you think about it. I bought 120ft.

It goes around all the lampshades every year which is also the excuse I give for still having Ikea rice paper lamp shades when I am a 36 year old married mother of two. Actually, I am technically still a student too so that in itself is all the reason I need.

The tree is bought and up and decorated by les enfants. Tasteful as ever.

It snowed a little on Saturday but we had to leave it behind to go down the east coast and see Baby Early (still three weeks from due date!) and his family, now all happily settled in their new home. How light and easy it is to say that now and how terrifying it all seemed six weeks ago! I miss them being within walking distance but their house is wonderful and visiting will be too.

The rest of the weekend was spent listening to the husband making crab apple jelly from our fruit.

The spiced one is nicest.

We also watched Away From Her. The ending was, as always, slightly different to the Alice Munro short story but not in a way that sweetened all the bitterness, just transferred it. Julie Christie is so beautiful and so was all the snow/emotion. I ache for snow.

I am just finishing Mark Thomas's Extreme Rambling: Walking Israel's Barrier. For Fun. It is, predictably given the author and subject matter respectively, both entertaining and depressing by turns. I would go rambling with Mark Thomas if he ever asked. I love finding out that people like to go walking. We should have a secret handshake so we can find each other in off-trail life.

Today the kids and I managed a second trip to the Winter Wonderland (bungeeing and those strange hamster balls on water), more cinnamon doughnuts and more La Favorita pizza on a double decker bus. I must confess we also went to the new Primark.

And now, apart from a kids' party, my ex-husband's carol concert and coffee with a friend, I have absolutely nothing in my diary until well into 2012. I'm not sure if that's tragic (what is this 'party season' that people talk of?) or blissful. The husband is off for two and a half weeks and there are two essays to write and the first series of The Killing to rent. Again I am reminded that one day I am going to have to Become A Writer if I am not just to Become Pathetic.

I very rarely have any New Year impulses because midwinter just doesn't inspire me to start afresh in any way; I do that in September when it's my birthday, my kids' birthdays and Back to School. But so many subtle changes have been stacking up over the latter half of the year that I must acknowledge that 2012 is going to be significantly different. Suz has moved, Baby Early is here, the dog has gone, the teenager is revising for exams, I am studying again, the little kid and I have been going to home ed club and perspectives, priorities and plans have changed in response to various new challenges. Blah, blah, blah, don't you love reading vague cryptic blog entries? So satisfying.

Anyway, firstly we are going to London (only to visit) because if I don't I might die. Then who knows what?

For the past couple of months I have felt like I am mentally processing an enormous piece of creative writing that I don't yet have the resources to get out. It's a bit like being constipated I suppose. (I wouldn't know; I eat a lot of fruit.) It takes the form of a dull porridgey area occupying most of my brain with nothing but the nagging sense that I really need to pay attention to it, whatever it is. Only I can't at the moment because I know that it's going to be a needy pain in the backside and I have too many other non-negotiable plates to keep spinning. (See also: Not Getting A Puppy.) So that too. Going places helps it - it doesn't like routine.

Oh, and continuing my fascinating series of dream retellings (also entitled Proof That I Really Must Stop Blogging Now): last night - following the UK's drift off towards the Arctic Circle - I dreamt I was at a PJ Harvey concert with Vince Cable. Dude can move though. Someone needs to turn our thermostat down.

165mph

2011-12-09T09:02:00.001Z

It was a mite windy yesterday. When the really big gusts started up, Atticus broke cover from his emergency trug and came belting in through the wide open cat flap with his ears flattened back to spend the rest of the day on the table yowling at me to turn off the gale.

I was prepared this time and sent the teenager out to denude the crab apple tree before it suffered a similar fate as the Egremont Russet in Hurricane Katia. Jelly needs to be made at the weekend.

Against police advice, we were forced to leave the house because a) Happy Feet 2 with friends and a penguin called Atticus and b) I had to deliver the previously discussed not-raw chocolate ganache tart to hungry vegans. On that: ZOMG it was SO GOOD. Even if you shelled (!) out for pecans and actual raw cacao it would be worth it. It was amazing and didn't feel remotely like a brick in your stomach afterwards either. High protein, high in essential fatty acids, high calcium (if you use almonds) and one of your five a day! It set perfectly; I could hold it on my fingetips like a plate. MAKE THIS. Or come over and I will make it for you. Well, you know, ask my husband or son to.

Anyway, apart from that culinary revelation, nothing too dramatic was happening in town - just the usual roped off hazards precariously lurching from buildings. It was bad timing with all the giant Christmas trees and lights and the big wheel though.

The burning wind turbine at Ardrossan was the most spectacular sight of the day.

But all is still this morning and I am desperate for proper snow.

Not Raw Like Me

2011-12-07T10:04:00.006Z

Christ, this must be the world's most expensive pie. There were supposed to be pecans, not almonds, but the pecans were £15 a bag. The raw cacao powder was £8 so, unsurprisingly, I am using Cadbury's Bournville cocoa instead: raw, schmaw. I'm not even going to comment on the pink Himalayan salt. I have no idea why the recipe omits a smattering of gold leaf.

If I weren't making Laura Coxetere's Raw Chocolate Ganache Tart for vegans then I would use honey - because I am highly sceptical of agave nectar - though admittedly not my husband's honey (sorry, just to clarify here for any readers only passing through - by 'my husband's honey' I mean the honey that he collects from his bees, not anything else...) since that costs £3,000 a jar to make and can only be consumed one drop at a time at the pinnacle of a sacred ceremony during which we all dress up in fluffy yellow and black striped outfits and perform suggestive interpretive 'dances' with a pair of fake limbs each. I might also be tempted to swap the £4's worth of 'raw virgin coconut oil' for BUTTER but that is because I am a bad, bad girl and will probably die young (ish) of a heart attack. Which at least means I won't have to suffer the indignity of being eighty and having all these tattoos.

Anyway, even with the agave and 'raw virgin coconut oil' it's still about 75,000 kcalories of fat and sugar in the guise of a raw, vegan, gluten-free, 'sugar'-free health food. Because, you see, the calories still actually count even when they are from 'good fats' and 'low G.I. sugars'. They do not just magically disappear in a puff of smug self-righteousness! Also, it would seem from the picture accompanying the recipe that Hugh/Ms. Coxetere had some tiny little pixies coming round for tea that day. This can be the only explanation for the suggested portion size. Or possibly that is just where I have been going wrong all my life in the whole puddings v. arse situation. I am not very good at moderation.

I need to be dragged up hills by an energetic dog. It's a great shame that Parker the lab/collie cross can only be rehomed with teenagers or older because his fear of ironing boards and hoovers would make our house the perfect refuge for him, having as I do a great aversion to such items myself.

Other soft cute things we can't afford include the Joules jumper with a hare on it which is conveniently sold out and anyway I don't really like the neckline or the colour and mainly just like the hare. I love hares. They are one of the few non-pet/endangered animals that I choose not to eat. I secretly believe they are witches who have shape-shifted and you don't want to go around eating witches because they will EFF YOU UP.

This week I have dreamt (I know, blogging about dreams. Next time: more about my cats) :

1. I went crab apple picking with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and a mad woman who was addicted to snorting the resin from trees. I kept shooting Hugh raised eyebrows but he seemed to think her entirely normal.
2. I adopted a Great Pyrenean Mountain Dog from Bear Grylls who was kayaking with his children. He was so soft and cuddy and I loved him. The dog, not Bear.

I think it's because I put the winter weight duvet on the bed.

Giant Silkie Chick

2011-12-05T12:59:00.000Z

silkie bantam 7.5 weeks

This chicken is still twice as big as the other two which are not bantams and only a week younger. Also, it is now clearly golden and not partridge which gives me hope it could be a girl after all.

The one that looks like Sam the Eagle is still a weird colour. The black one is still insane and needs to be told it's not supposed to be able to fly. They are all still living in our front room and are expected to remain there until, ooh, May.

(If you are a silkie breeder reading this and can instantly tell the bird in the photo is a male: ssshhh. I don't need to know until he crows...)

Also: the Amazon reviews of Mr Men books that I found on India Knight's Tumblr are brilliant.

And how cute is Benjamin the mongrel? Just saying.

Lard Sunday

2011-12-04T09:41:00.004Z

IT IS SNOWING! I have to walk across town to buy a joint of beef which is always oddly cheap at this turkey-obsessed time of year. I don't, strictly speaking, have to walk but I need to walk because I am laying down some serious winter fat here (wrap dress time) and we're only on 4th December; I already started on the duck pâté but I've held back on the Stilton so far... The husband is having a belated Stir Up Sunday. I do not like dried fruit of any kind so am never tempted by Christmas cake mixture, mince pies or Christmas pudding - yuck. Give me a sherry trifle any day.

Yesterday we walked into town and back to get the last of the stocking fillers (I aim to have all non-edible Christmas preparations done before Advent. It is The Way and means I can devote more time to solid eating in December) and managed to consume about five time's our journey's worth of delicious sweet and salty calories.

It is a blessing really that it is only at Christmas that one can readily buy all manner of greasy delights on Princes Street. This year a pleasant side effect of our city's tram nightmare (briefly: running about three years behind schedule and £650 million over budget; lines just laid on the city's main street are already so damaged that the road has had to be closed a second time while they are relaid) is that they have put eating opportunites along the empty tarmac. La Favorita has a pizza oven and two old red double decker buses to eat it on. The pizza was very good and I am going back to have the Christmas topping (turkey, stuffing, cranberries, obviously) next week. This time I will try not to have a bag of cinnamon mini doughnuts from the fair afterwards.

A Shakeaway was opening (I know, this AND PRIMARK) - I've never been to a branch but milkshakes are one of my favourite things in the world. I try to avoid dairy because it makes my cat allergy worse but I noticed they claim to offer soya. The enormous menu was almost as off-putting as the enormous queue for (presumably) free shakes though so we didn't try. I think it is possibly a sign of advancing middle age but I can't bear having to read a long menu. If I go anywhere - even a sandwich shop - that has seventy-five options, all with sub-options and ridiculous names I can't remember, I just refuse to look and opt to converse with the poor exasperated (young) counter assistant instead. I am very suspicious of a great deal of choice anyway. I am British; it is not The Way. Just give me what you've got and don't be too smiley about it or I'll think you've spat in my tea. In desperation I frequently dispatch the husband to order for me but of course a mere five years together hasn't given him any sort of grounding in my exacting tastes so he always returns jubilant to be met with my:

'Oh...'
'You don't like this one?'
'No, no, it's fine.' (small sigh)
'You want me to get something else?'
'No, no, this is great' (small sigh; glance at husband's)
'You want to swap?'
'No, no. I don't like yours either.'
'Well why didn't you choose your bloody own then!'
'This is fine. Had they run out of [insert thing I really wanted] then?'
'Since when did you like [insert thing I have always loved]??'

Which is only right and proper because it is on such bonding exchanges that all marriage is built. ('Gentle bickering' is the term our humanist celebrant used.)

We did go in the Harvey Nichols Foodmarket pop up shop on Multrees Walk which I thoroughly recommend for a good laugh, especially if you're a visiting American. (Single cup serving of Frosted Lucky Charms? That'll be not much change from FOUR QUID, Madam.)They have a lot of things (chocolate-coated ants, tequila worm lollies etc) you can find in Cybercandy considerably cheaper and Cybercandy isn't know for it's terrific value for money.

When we got home the husband made fish head soup from the huge pile of salmon and cod heads we had frozen after our neighbour's fishing trips. It was very very good. Then started watching Jamie's Great Britain on the box and loved his bunny bolognese. Basically you put the rabbit and all the veg whole in a stock pot, cook it for twelve hours and then mush it up with your fingers. Also finished Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage (a lot like her contemporary, Barbara Kingsolver, no?), put Away From Her on my LoveFilm list and watched The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest in preparation for starting again soon with The [English language] Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which I do not have high hopes for since I LOVED Noomi in the role.

What I am really supposed to be doing is writing another essay, but first we NEED beef, see? AND IT'S PANDA DAY!

Ad-vent

2011-12-01T18:37:00.004Z

This photo brought to you by my teenage son and the attitude: Can't Be Arsed (admittedly because I yelled through from the study, 'Oi, take a photo of the advent calendar for my blog will you? I can't be arsed.' I blame the parents.)

Advent calenders that are film/tv tie-ins or don't have Christmas-themed chocolates (note: a ball is not, in itself, Christmassy) vex me and making my own when I want one to be for myself sort of defeats the object too, so this year I bought Lindt ones. Lack of cartoons? Check. Christmassy things? Check! Yumosity? Check. There was a hollow reindeer today. I bit its head off.

Then we went skating at the Christmas rink and ate the traditional Christmas food stuffs: blue candy floss, dinky doughnuts, pretzels and hot dogs. I can see I am going to need to rein in this indulging or things are all going to go a bit 7th January again.

Anyway, I can't blog because I have finally started watching The Killing and am currently auditioning Sarah Lund as my new Ruth Evershed. Obviously this means Sarah Lund's days are now numbered although she may be saved by an apparent lack of love interest. Everyone knows you only die if you love somebody and are just about to embark on a happy future together. Keep being an emotionally-crippled loner and you'll surely live forever.

(Have just noticed I am typing this wearing a snowflake print grey fluffy knit which I think Sarah would like. See? New BFF.)

Other things I have finally got round to starting include learning chess and the guitar.

My chess teacher is nine and my guitar teacher is 15.

I am a challenging student because:
a) I keep calling the chess pieces 'the one with the cut in it' or 'the castley one' and forgetting where they can even move, nevermind grasping any concept of strategy and
b) I am tone deaf, cack-handed and can't understand concepts such as pitch and rhythm.

Still, important to stimulate blood flow to the brain in one's advancing years, no? Plus I am forever playing catch-up with my husband's public school education which seems to have been composed almost entirely of Latin and the playing of chess, cello and rugby. No home ec or metalwork! No country dancing! And yet he still cooks and dances far better than me. His metalwork is complete shite though.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-29T08:09:00.000Z

On Sunday we went to the Kingdom of Fife for our third (belated) Thanksgiving dinner with E, S and A. As usual, there was an insane amount of food and it was all insanely good.

Here is my plate and note that I didn't take either sweet or mashed potatoes (ssh don't tell E or she'll post me some) and it is still overflowing.

The wonderful celeriac with cream and chilli and green beans with toasted almonds are on there, as well as the turkey meats and stuffing/dressing, sauerkraut, cranberry sauce and proper gravy.

To start there were those mango chutney stuffed dates wrapped in bacon that I copy, plus amazing jamon just brought back from Spain.

To finish there were pecan, pumpkin and bumbleberry pies with cream. I couldn't get a photo of the pecan because it got eaten too quickly.

I liked the pumpkin best.

They are such fantastic hosts and it is always such a lovely evening, for which we are very thankful.

Goat Stew

2011-11-28T08:58:00.004Z

One of the culinary things I miss most - apart from Borough Market - about the husband living in south London, is being able to buy African and Caribbean food everywhere.

So I was very excited to see a new take away called Spoilt For Choice, selling just that, near Meadowbank. We picked up a menu when they first opened and were dismayed by the fact it was endless and advertised everything from Congolese snails to pizza. Spoilt for Choice is exactly what I would expect the food to be with so many options on offer. That or like some of the restaurants in Tanzania that had twenty page menus but after half an hour of back and forthing with the waiter you had whittled down the actual food available to plain rice or plain rice with chilli sauce.

We didn't order and a couple of weeks later I noticed a sign in the window saying they had decided to reduce the menu - yay! This weekend we had a car and, since I never trust take away delivery services on Saturday nights, we took the opportunity to pick up dinner there.

It was incredibly busy, pretty chaotic, and there was a long wait but the food was very good.

We had goat stew (of course), jerk chicken (ditto), peppered beef, fried sweet plantain, coconut joloffe rice, Caribbean sticky spare ribs, corn fritters and puff puff (the thing that looks - and tastes - like a deep-fried Yorkshire pudding).

I wouldn't bother with the puff puff again and the beef was a bit too chewy for me but everything else was excellent, especially the goat, ribs, fritters and plantain. Prices seemed a lot lower than an Indian take away too. The only downside was that it was barely warm and we were less than a five minute drive away and didn't waste any time getting stuck in.

Hopefully the combination of deliciousness and value - plus the fact that I only know of one other place in the whole city that sells similar food - will mean people overlook other factors, which should improve with time anyway. We would definetly eat there again but probably on a quieter week night. I'd really like to see them do well.

Goodnight Rosie

2011-11-27T08:43:00.007Z

Don't worry, that's as traumatic as the photos are going to get. I was just amazed to see how deep the hole had to be. That is my husband in it. He is 6'7". He is still digging.

People have been so sweet and kind; even people who have never loved a dog.

Rosie had as nice a death as any of us could wish for, though I'm sure she'd rather still be alive. I don't know. Lacking consciousness she might well have just wanted the pain to stop and now it has.

As I have documented here, she had been deteriorating over the past few weeks but although the overall pattern of the graph was downwards, after each drop there was a little rise so that it was never overwhelmingly obvious that the time had come.

Then on Friday morning, after a particularly bad night of falls and bed-soiling and just standing forlornly because she knew that lying down on her bed was going to hurt too much, she didn't get up for breakfast. I went in shaking her bowl and she just raised her head and let it fall again, something she had never done before. I said all along that the day she didn't get up to eat was the day I would call the vet out*, so I did.

*You need to know Rosie to understand that. Rosie would wriggle limbless over broken glass for a piece of toast as long as she were able.

I hand fed her while she lay down again and when I left the room she struggled up to look for more, fell several times before I could catch her, soiled the bed again and then gave up and couldn't even eat from my hand. If you live with an animal for years you understand their moods and she had an expression in her eyes that I hadn't seen before. She just looked in pain and exhausted.

The hour before the vet got here was the worst for me, if not her. She fell soundly asleep and I wanted to spend all of that time with her but couldn't because I was crying hysterically and it would have disturbed her and made her anxious. At one point I stopped sobbing long enough to lie on her bed (her bed is an actual futon bed) but I don't usually do that and she looked worried and confused so in the end I left her to sleep and went about the house pretending it was just a normal morning and not the last minutes of her life.

Shortly before the vet arrived, at lunchtime, she finally got up on her own and went to ask the teenager for biscuits as usual. She ate four and I was beside myself with misery wondering whether to call him and cancel. Then I remembered what someone smart had told me about getting ahead of this thing. Did I want her last day to be one where she was screaming in pain (and believe me, greyhounds do scream), unable to move at all, or one where she had still managed to get up - admittedly not until lunchtime - for biscuits? Also, did I want it to be a day where I could have our lovely vet come out or a day over Christmas or Hogmanay when she might have to wait in agony for hours before an on call stranger could get here? I was really grateful to that advice stored away, because it was the right thing to go ahead.

The vet was brilliant. The only heartbreaking moment - and if this doesn't make you cry then nothing will - was when Rosie snuffled hopefully in his lethal drugs bag in search of doggie treats. She lay on her bed and we all sat around her stroking her and telling her what a good girl she was and then she went to sleep.

It is at the point where the logistics of having such a big dog start turning a terribly sad and poignant day into a British black comedy.

The husband left work to come back and join the teenager in digging the hole but even with two of them, it took hours to shift thirty cubic feet of wet claggy soil and rubble. It was pouring with rain - which was an improvement on last year when the ground would have been frozen solid - and dark by 3pm.

This meant that Rosie lay in state, on her bed in our living room, for the rest of the day. I lit candles and the kids, my mum and my ex-husband (who Rosie had lived with for five years prior to this January when I had her back) all came to pay their respects. I thought it would be macabre but it was actually oddly lovely and every time I felt bereft or wondered whether I had imagined the whole day, I just wandered back in and stroked her silky ears. At one point the little kid asked if he could watch tv in the other room because, 'There is a dead dog in here, Mum' but aside from that we carried on as usual.

I now realise I am one of those people who would have their animals stuffed and keep them forever. I really didn't want her to go outside in the ground but it was all that funds permitted (especially after a house-visit from the vet though that was worth EVERY PENNY) so, by torchlight, the soaked and mud-covered teenager and husband carried her out in her tartan wool blanket.

I honestly couldn't care less about roses or diamonds - digging a three foot deep hole to bury the dog of the woman you love is true romance.

Black Friday

2011-11-25T12:52:00.001Z

Goodbye, my beautiful silky-eared greyhound. You were the best dog ever in the world and I was so lucky to know you for thirteen of your nearly fifteen years.

You have raced professionally, sprinted for joy on pristine white sand beaches in the Outer Hebrides, had your own bed in a B&B in Wales, seen Stonehenge, slept in tents, travelled between Edinburgh and London on the train numerous times, been on the Tube and double decker buses, eaten countless Mr Whippies and never chased a cat.

You were the size of a small horse and made friends everywhere, especially in the pub.

What will I do without my puppy?

Silkies at 5/6 Weeks

2011-11-25T08:47:00.000Z

There is a size discrepancy between the silkie chicks.

front

The golden one is six weeks old and the two darker ones only five weeks.

side

But the golden one is a bantam and the other two are standards so I had expected them to be a similar size by now. Maybe standards take longer to mature?

behind

The black one and the golden (middle photo) are constantly squaring up to each other and fighting suddenly. I'm not sure if it's the size difference causing problems but it seems to be the little black one instigating it (although who knows with chickens - perhaps the golden one is giving it some cocky eye contact) and the other little dark one gets on fine with them both. Possibly this means the golden and black birds are both cocks. Joy.

I still can't quite work out what colours they are, other than the black one which is easy. Both the other two (top photo) are supposed to be partridges despite looking nothing like each other. I suspect this means a gender difference as the partridge is the only colouring that differs from cock to hen. Although neither resemble adult partridges yet, the male partridge is far more golden which fits with my golden and black birds being fighting cocks. At least that would mean I had one hen.

If so, she is also by far the friendliest of the birds and the biggest fan of mealworms. (I don't whether the same applies to chickens but with quail you can virtually sex them by throwing down some mealworms and seeing who eats them. The cocks might gather them to feed to their women but they rarely eat them themselves.) She has a funny downturned pattern round her beak that makes her look very much like Sam the Eagle, one of my favourite Muppets.

If she does turn out to be my lone hen - and we won't know for sure until they've all crowed or laid an egg, which could take up to A YEAR - then I will go back to the lovely silkie farmer and buy her a golden or blue or black friend. I had intended to let a lone hen hatch and brood a batch of fertile eggs herself but I don't think I can be doing with the faff of having chickens in the house again. Not when we share it with murderous cats.

My Garden in Late Autumn/Early Winter 2011

2011-11-24T10:36:00.001Z

crab apples awatiting jelly-making

strawberry cover crop; died-back rhubarb; flopping globe artichokes

lemon sorrel; dying violas; newly planted wild garlic bulbs

nigella seed pods

still a few raspberries

horseradish awaiting sauce-making; in the background: Jerusalem artichokes cut down, awaiting Christmas dinner

wild strawberry cover crop; insane nasturtiums

not had a fire yet this autumn

worms and comfrey doing well

Late Summer/Early Autumn
Late Spring/Early Summer
Late Winter/Early Spring

Distractions

2011-11-22T12:14:00.002Z

bees

crab apple

wild garlic bulbs

It was vitally important that we visited the bees again, researched crab apple jelly, planted fifty wild garlic bulbs and watched every episode of The Thick of It ever made but, finally, the hall was painted.

Blogging cannot express how much I loathe diy. I do not require the services of professionals to cook or garden for me, clean my house, raise my children, cut my hair or wax me but I would happily pay hundreds of pounds to painters and decorators - and particularly plasterers and joiners - for their services. This would mean that instead of cooking, gardening, cleaning the house, raising the children and grooming myself I would have to start bringing in some money though. And when I do, as God is my witness: I'LL NEVER GO TO B&Q AGAIN.

Chickens, Swann's, Bees, Protozoa

2011-11-18T09:49:00.005Z

As you can see, there are now three chickens living in our study. And what we call 'the study' is in fact our second living room, the one where teenagers play X-box. It smells like a barn and there is a lot of chirping. I imagine there have been neighbourhood jokes made about the red light always being on at our place too.

It is winter and time to resume decorating the house. We have lived here nearly two and a half years now and at least half the rooms still have woodchip on the walls, brown gloss paint and polystyrene ceiling tiles. It's not that we don't notice how vile they are, it's that they are so vile one has to block them out for one's mental health thus they become entirely invisible to us. We are not devotees of the hideous cult of diy and the effort required to remove ceiling tile glue, brown gloss paint and woodchip wallpaper is so great that even a committed B&Q fan would surely baulk. So instead of dealing with the downstairs house of horrors we are going to paint the nice, clean, bare plaster in the loft conversion we had done last year. And, yes, it has taken us a year to paint it but that's because it's good to leave new plaster a long time to settle, actually. So I am hoping to paint the stair alcove this weekend and then we can finally put bookcases in it and unpack the boxes of fiction that have been in storage since my husband moved up from London in a previous lifetime.

This is timely as I am developing an unprecedented compulsion for fiction. Tell me your stories! Lie to me! I blame Alain de Botton. After he lured me in with Essays in Love, I moved on to the brilliant How Proust Can Change Your Life and have now gone so far as to order Swann's Way, an actual work of non-non fiction. I have also just bought Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees because I can't remember when or why I stopped buying poetry. Twenty years ago I read one of my poems on Radio 4 alongside Carol Ann Duffy reading hers. I think it's fair to say she's been a bit more prolific/successful than me since then. But how many first world war dioramas (speaking of which, I also bought The Christmas Truce for the teenager's stocking) and trays of cinder toffee has she produced, eh? Okay, probably more than me since she has managed mothering too.

Other things I have done this week, lacking five hundred pounds and a room of my own as well as - perhaps more crucially - any discernible talent, include taking the kids to The Barber of Seville Unwrapped. These free opera unwrapped events are brilliant - you learn the plot, see some of the performance and are shown a bit about stage management. For kids who don't want to sit through a whole opera or adults who want some insight beforehand, they are such a great idea. Did I mention they are FREE? They do, unfortunately, make your wife - who goes a bit Pretty Woman at both opera and the ballet - want to spend £60 on a ticket rather than potatoes or something. (Did you like how I referenced Virginia Woolf and Vivian Ward seamlessly in the same paragraph?)

In addition to meeting their cultural needs, I also took the urchins to Life through A Lens - a great educational project from The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology which reminded me that I would really like a decent edition of Robert Hooke's Micrographia, but all the reviews on Amazon are terrible. (It also reminded me not to swallow pond water.)

All this and Apocalypse Now at the weekend. (Then NO MORE WAR FILMS.)

The husband and teenager made about five pounds of braising steak into a stew with pearl barley last night, as part of our neonatal meals on wheels project, so we'll be eating our half of that for days which is good since we'll also be too paint-covered to cook. I might manage dumplings because the flecks of white won't show.

I still can't see Mr Early as I'm still hacking my guts up but he is doing well.

Graffiti With Punctuation

2011-11-13T15:01:00.023Z

silkie chick at 4 weeks

This chicken thinks it's a peacock.

I ended up going to see Contagion a second time. It's not unusual for me to see films at the cinema twice for reasons other than their overwhelming brilliance. We - as an extended family - come in many permutations and this weekend, whilst the teenager's girlfriend and I were up for Wuthering Heights (personally I am always up for any Wuthering Heights), the boys wanted mass fatalities. I liked Contagion anyway so it was no hardship particularly as I have a cold and it was fun to sneeze conspicuously at quiet moments of infectious contemplation.

Since I missed Jane Eyre too there will need to be a Brontë dvd weekend in the new year. I've come round to Jane with age in the same way I can now appreciate sheep as much as goats. There is something to be said for dignity and not making such a bloody fuss all the time. Having identifed this, I can only hope that I become increasingly able to implement it as the years go by but on the other hand, sheep are sheep and goats are goats. Anyone still following?

Seeing Mr Early this weekend is verboten because of me and my germy FOMITES so instead we have been to see the bees and tell them, rather belatedly, about his birth. My husband, for reasons not entirely understood by his wife, decided to conduct some minor external hive maintenance without benefit of his radiation suit and was - predictably enough I would have thought but who knows what goes on in the mind of the middle-aged man? - driven by furious apians into the direction of his now not enormously sympathetic wife who was apparently then expected to act as some sort of lure, an actual honey trap if you like, but preferred to demur in favour of hitting him about the head and groin with a regrettably sharp object. (It may not be wholly obvious from this paragraph but I do love this man.) He only sustained a few stings, the one under his glasses being the worst, largely thanks to the protective qualities of his mad professor stylee beard-and-luxuriant-hair combo. I nursed him with a bar of Galaxy for the shock. I think the bees may have been pissed off that we didn't let them know about the baby sooner. The husband is going back to to finish the job, besuited and having washed away the 'STING HERE!' pheromone, when the kids get back from the Remembrance service to take over in the now curiously vacated role of lure.

I will be at home reading The Observer Food Monthly (speaking of the Guardy - I loved the lap-dancing interview with Jennifer Hayashi Danns and may have to buy the book: 'While you are dancing you don't talk about it – because if you are not going to stop, what possible value is there in letting [those thoughts] fester? That's why I would question research which only talks to people who are still working.' YES, YES, YES! And I love when Tim Minchin talks about monogamy: 'I'd give anything to get nude with you right now. Except for what I've got. I wouldn't give that.' I have always genuinely thought 'If I Didn't Have You' is a very romantic song because it acknowledges reality and celebrates the actual work of creating relationships successfully rather than perpetuating a cycle of make-believe followed by disillusioned disappointment. It was the principle I was trying to convey in my wedding reading entitled, 'Love Is Not A Rose Garden, It's A Compost Heap'. I am available for all your marital speech-giving needs, call me.) and tweaking the vegan gluten-free Millionaire's Shortbread. Back in omnivory, we are having chicken korma for Sunday roast because the husband has been making meals on wheels for the new parents who are simultaneously moving house, renovating a house and living at the neonatal unit, and one pot dishes transfer to (disinfectanted) (FOMITES!) Tupperware best. Chicken korma is Suz's curry of choice, not mine, but the husband made it with coconut cream rather than dairy so that I won't be up wheezing all night and it looks very good. I think we still have some of Suz's home-made mango chutney to go with it too.

There was a Rick Stein's French Odyssey fest on telly last night and I caught the Bazas beef episode. Whilst I find Franco-Italiano cuisine worshipping to be so two-thousand and late, I was pretty much humping the screen over those steaks. It is embarrassing, perhaps, to admit that my last meal - admittedly sandwiched between raw Loch Harport oysters and some perfectly ripe cherries - would probably have to be a mature, aged, twitching, crusted steak. I am not sure if it is normal to get so excited about the thought of eating such a perfect piece of meat; I do wonder sometimes if there is something slightly wrong with me. I was flushed with excitement and panting slightly in front of the screen which is a response that other women seem to have only to Colin Firth in period drama. Or chocolate.

(In the cursory glance I give these lame-arsed posts to check for particularly obvious crimes against the English language - not including those I leave in Secretary-style to give my husband a real sense of purpose in life - it is often apparent that my level of hypomania can be accurately judged by the number of links I have included, thus giving us the proper medical term for my current condition: hyperlinked.)

11.11.11

2011-11-11T14:38:00.001Z

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Scotland manufactures and sells its own poppies. I grew up not far from the Poppy Factory in Richmond, Surrey but apparently the ones made in Edinburgh are more 'botanically correct' with their four petals and lack of leaf which, also, just happens to make them cheaper to produce too...

Armistice Day has been particularly noteable this year, not just due to the pleasing date but because we've been studying twentieth century British wars.

This week we've been looking at the Falklands Conflict and have Tumbledown to watch.

Vegan Gluten-Free Baking/Love

2011-11-09T11:39:00.010Z

Another busy week. There are suddenly a lot of them since we embarked on the transition to Home Education Without The Teenager, because the little kid and I have been forced to get out there and embrace our people or risk spending the next seven years on the couch with the cats, reading. Some of our people are gluten and dairy free so this has also heralded a new era of experimental baking. Mostly I have just been avoiding cake and making confectionary that is already gluten and dairy free - macaroons and meringues being the staples - but now veganism has been added to the mix and I have to put aside the eggs too. This is how it came to be that, after spending £27 in Real Foods on products that I would really prefer not to own (god knows that one does to a soya bean to make it into 'whipping cream' but I'd rather have a cow), we made vegan gluten-free Millionaire's Shortbread last night.

I have made normal Millionaire's Shortbread only once before because, like tiramisu, it was so good that it immediately found itself in the category of foods triggering unhealthy behaviour. I can eat those things as an individual portion when I'm out, but if I make a whole pan at home then I will be found grazing at midnight by the light of the fridge door, and I am not as down with that as Nigella is. Baking them for gatherings is fine though.

So we tweaked a vegan recipe from Parsley Soup which has done all the hard work already (although I require double the caramel, personally) and just needed gluten-free flour and xanthan gum. As usual, this was a Team Us effort and the husband did the actual baking after I had researched and shopped. The teenager made vegan flapjacks for the gluten tolerant.

It is a great relief to have moved on from the way I have been feeling all summer which wasn't bad, just a bit lost. In - admittedly very recent - retrospect I can see that a crossroads had suddenly emerged out of the fog of slogging eyes-down for years; I had been unable to see it coming and had forgotten the path was ever going to fork anyway. Muddy metaphors aside, everything is clear again now. Which probably means that something else completely unforseen is about to blindside us but, hey, that really is life.

In the meantime I shall continue parenting, teaching, studying, writing, growing food, raising chickens, reading on the couch with the cats and being with my wonderful husband who, after the kids and cats and chickens have all flown the coop, will hopefully still be here putting up with my notions and test-baking my recipes. He and I watched Coco Before Chanel the other day and it was lovely. The older I get, the more ridiculously reconciled to romance I become.

Guy Fawkes

2011-11-06T10:15:00.004Z

Remember my mum's shed that we were going to make into a chicken coop but it was too manky? Reader, we burnt it.

Bonfire night at the beach is, in my opinion, vastly superior to any other location due to the presence of copious sand and water. Health and safety, innit? There were, as usual, some excellent fireworks and this year none of them fell over and nearly killed us either, which is always a bonus. A new addition to the festivities was the appearence of Chinese lanterns. Maybe we will do those ourselves next year if there are no sheds to burn.

Our fireworks food was boudin noir from Findlays with sliced fried apple rings and onions. I love blood sausage.

Sunday breakfast was duck egg French toast with fresh raspberry coulis.

I was delighted to see James Martin championing the duck egg on The Great British Food Revival. Since I tasted my first duck egg I lost all interest in hens' eggs (sshh, don't tell the silkies) but the husband is sniffy about using them because a) he follows recipes and therefore needs to know how many millilitres of duck egg constitute a hen egg or some such maniacal nonsense ('Just enough' is my standard answer.) and b) he says they taste 'of the pond' which is entirely in his head.

Mr Martin also looked at quails' eggs and I was nostalgic for my little birds but only until I was reminded of a) the huge open air pens they really should live in and b) the bloody fiddly peeling of the eggs. I also disagree that their flavour is recognisably different to that of hens' eggs, though I do think their size makes for the perfect hard-boiled/Scotch egg, especially when one is not keen on a mouthful of egg white as I am not. It is ducks that I should be keeping but they tend to be much noisier and messier than chickens so not perfect for a small urban garden. Still, if these silkies are all cockerels, I may yet implement Project Muscovy.

Cycles

2011-11-05T16:04:00.008Z

silkie chick at 3 weeks

First there were no babies, now there are babies everywhere! Dr Sian, Mr Dr Sian and the little Dr Sianlettes all came up this week and that was a whole lot of boys. I love boys. I love being a quasi-aunty. I especially love, I realised, hanging out with little people and then getting to go to bed for eight hours' uninterrupted sleep when their parents come back. Auntying - all the fun of parenting without the rubbish bits.

It is strange now to think how worried we all were about the baby being induced at 34 weeks so Dr Sian could start chemo, when now he is huge, she is cancer-free and 34 weeks seems a great deal closer to term than 31 does. But I am going to see Mr Early tomorrow and he is doing brilliantly too. Having a spare room is feeling like less of a luxury and more of a godsend now we can be on call for accomodation and hot food for the next few weeks while he stays at the baby farm.

The study reeks of chicken shit and I will be glad to move the chicks to a heated pen in the sun room when they are properly feathered. Marmite looks like an insane baby ostrich (see above though the great lengths of his legs and neck are not visible) and I am certain he is male. I am able now, after two years of poultry-keeping - not to bond with them until they lay an egg. I know that until they prove their femininity they can't be pets. I just don't like any system that puts less value on one gender, whatever the species.

Amidst all the new life, our historical film this week was When The Wind Blows. God, I can't believe they showed that to us as kids DURING THE COLD WAR. It's not wonder I'm a bloody nervous wreck.

The dog is also edging faster towards death. Her appetite is fading and some days scrambling eggs is the only way to get her to eat. Her hips and knees are rapidly becoming even less mobile and she is even less able to get up and walk to the door at night. She isn't pawing for treats anymore and occasionally she just stands with her head hung and looks ready to give up. But if there's a joint roasting she'll still stagger in to the kitchen and wedge herself up against the oven door for an hour or so and she has still yet to refuse a biscuit. The day she does is the day I will call the vet out. And cry hysterically. And start digging a bloody huge hole.

Dug Up

2011-10-30T17:58:00.005Z

I am not particularly creative nor sociable so this week has been well outside my usual comfort zone. We have made three costumes and two models and been to a history fair and two parties in 48 hours. Also I wrote an art history essay having only learnt what picture planes and aerial perspective were today. All this has been made possible by my alter ego: corpse bride. She can make stuff and talk to people by virtue of her super-powered blood-soaked wedding dress and drastic eye make-up*.

Mr Early is doing so well at the baby farm. We improvised an expressed milk transportation unit from half a dozen ice-packs and a picnic bag and his mum is lactating like a dairy cow.

This week we have Dr Sian and her preemie staying along with Mr Dr Sian and the big boy. And it's my mum's birthday. Also my husband has some Important Shit At Work and I have accidentally dyed his beard pink with zombie spouse fake blood seepage. It won't wash out and he is going to have to meet people looking like he is paying homage to Billy Connolly.

The kitchen table is always - terrible cliché though it is - the centre of our lives and this weekend it has been covered in world war dioramas, dusty veils, Cezanne prints and tray after tray of sticky oozing cinder toffee/hokey pokey/puff candy/honeycomb (depending what part of the country you come from). And cats, obviously.

The cinder toffee shouldn't haven't been sticky or oozing but I couldn't remember the recipe. We had to make a vegan gluten-free party offering so it seemed a great seasonal choice, especially since it's so easy. I instructed the husband to 'boil sugar with golden syrup, add some bicarb and pour', because last time I did that it produced perfect Crunchie-like honeycomb. This time we had several trays of too chewy, too coarse or too sticky confetionary before he gave up listening to me, Googled a recipe, got out his fancy temperature probe and made perfect Crunchie-like honeycomb. Teamwork, innit. It was very well received by nostalgic adults, one of whom had made a vegan gluten-free version of chocolate peanut butter squares that I could possibly just live on for the rest of my life.

The highlight of the party, though, was when the host's dog stole and ate The Ghost of William Wallace's raw sausage entrails...

*Ladies, does your corpse bridal gown say 'size 4' on the label? Even assuming that it's American, this seems highly optimistic, especially with your well documented love of chocolate/peanut butter combos. Don't worry! Simply take a knife and slash it open on either side - voilà! - no drastic dietary changes (like eschewing chocolate/peanut butter combos) necessary! Don't forget to smear fake blood all over the pasty white flab you have now revealed! Work it, baby!

Automatic Doors

2011-10-28T11:21:00.001+01:00

silkie chick at 2 weeks (on the right)

I haven't updated about the silkie chicks because something else has been going on in an incubator this week.

My best friend's baby was due after Christmas - I personally was hoping for her water's to break spectacularly as I flambéd the pudding, perhaps dousing the flame? - but he couldn't wait for Santa and he's out already.

So far so good and everyone has everything crossed for him. This week I got to do two things I've never done before: sprint down the corridor in a maternity unit and meet a three and a half pound baby.

It's not for blogging about, I'm just saying that is what is going on here. So here are the silkies. Cute. But, yeah.

In Defence of Dogs

2011-10-27T10:49:00.004+01:00

I sent Magdalena In Defence of Dogs for her birthday because we were both Cesar Millan's bitches once and this book is anti- his methods, thus interesting. When I first started watching The Dog Whisperer it all made perfect sense to me but also put me off ever having a dog again. Seriously, I don't have the mental space to keep making sure I am walking through doorways first and only giving affection when it isn't sought - not with dogs anyway. I have enough of a full-time job maintaining my position as top wife and head mother without having to be constantly alert in case the dog makes a bid for pack leadership because I let it eat a Bonio before I had my morning toast.

It never occurred to me to question Cesar's Way which is also exactly why his Way works. Cesar has presence. Hell, the man is about four feet tall and still manages to be suspiciously attractive: dogs and bitches just do what he says.

Magdalena and I have presence: Magdalena can wither a class of unruly soldiers without missing a beat and I can make a grown man cry quite by accident, but both of us have an inner core of self-disbelief that dogs - unlike men - can smell a mile off.

I have dealt with this by choosing a dog who, whilst completely untrainable (by me anyway), does not take advantage of my weaknesses purely because it's not in her nature. She never ever pulls on the lead, barks, shows even mild aggression or exhibits destructive behaviour. Her sole vices are typically greyhound: she will steal and eat anything vaguely food-related (she ate a whole carboard fishfinger box a few weeks ago) from anyone and she has absolutely no recall outside our property unless you have a squeaky toy with you at all times. Nobody's perfect.

The trouble is, she is nearly fifteen now. I am faced with a future in which I must either find another such well-mannered canine or learn to mould my own. Or even - horror - be dogless.

When I saw this book I hoped it would liberate me from Cesar's dreary rules and indeed it does but it also points out that many of the behavioural issues with dogs stem from the horrible practise of modern pedigree breeding (if you haven't already watched the BBC's Pedigree Dogs Exposed, please do) and from society's ever lowering tolerance of dogs being dogs (by which I do not mean the 'He's only playing!' response shrieked across the playing fields from some distant and distracted owner while their filthy slobbering hound of the Baskervilles attempts rough and wholly uninvited congress with you) - neither of which are likely to change anytime soon.

So I don't really know that the answer is. Living with dogs is natural to me but it feels like most of the rest of our culture is divided into people who are most unwilling to tolerate a dog brushing past them on the bus and are keen to let me know that, or people whose inbred untrained dogs are so irritating or dangerous that I'd really rather not have to negotiate them. I don't need the stress of either frankly.

On the other hand, for the British, having a dog gives one an automatic connection with anyone else who has ever known canine love and we - socially inept nation that we are - will gratefully seize that connection at every opportunity. When the greyhound moved back in with us after a prolonged stay with her grandma, I spoke to more people from the neighbourhood in the first few weeks than I had in the past two years; she was like a secret handshake.

She has started to go off her dinner now, a change - for such an indiscriminate gannet - that I have always expected to herald her imminent end. I spend half my time thinking that we can't go on forever with the floor cleaning and the tie of not leaving her, and half being completely unable to imagine her no longer existing after nearly thirteen years of being part of our family. She was a rescue ex-racer I adopted when she was two - the same age as the teenager was then. I have had her for longer than my younger son and my husband!

She still loves a dog biscuit though, and she still flirts outrageously, still runs in from the garden in the mornings and still stands by the oven exhaling audibly through her nose like a horse (the only vocalisation she ever makes) the whole time anyone is cooking. So maybe we have a while yet.

Man-made

2011-10-26T08:31:00.004+01:00

Good lord, when did we start publishing pictures of people's dead and dying bodies in national newspapers? In the past week or so we've had Meredith Kercher's death scene, a completely superfluous tour of 'landscape architect' Jo Yeates's flat following her murder, Michael Jackson's corpse and now Gaddafi's final moments. Is it really necessary? Can't anything stay private anymore? (Asks the blogger.)

That said, the kids have been watching JFK's assassination endlessly now that their history studies have caught up with the invention of moving film.

Still ploughing through films* that have anything whatsoever to do with WWII: The Great Escape and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas with The Dam Busters and, um, Pearl Harbour** next then Enigma and Charlotte Gray. The Imperial War Museum joins my ongoing list of London attractions I wish I hadn't moved so far from.

Last week there was a canal boat trip to detract from all the tragic loss of life.

central Edinburgh!

spot the heron

*I should point out that these screenings are accompanied by the appropriate critical analysis.

**Everyone is allowed one embarrassing Hollywood transgression. Mine is the Baffleck. Yeah, shut up.

Ruthless

2011-10-24T10:07:00.001+01:00

You might want to look away now if you haven't watched the Spooks finale yet.

So both Ruths have departed - one back down to London and the other to the great big MI5 in the sky. Scriptwriters: I hate you. Telly needs more Ruth Eversheds. She was utterly brilliant and always appropriately attired. (Spaghetti straps and cleavage in the office are my pet hates.)

My weekend with the still-living Ruth and the still-pregnant Suz was lovely and summarised thusly:

Ate blueberry pancakes:

Picked up some chicks:

Went to Dunbar:

there is a huge seal swimming just below the surface somewhere

Also attended Jo Jo's Danish bakery (suprisingly lovely), The Granary in Leith (unexpectedly awful) and Contagion which seemed a slightly better choice for an expectant mother than ...Kevin and was very watchable.

Next: a week of making zombie costumes and vile-coloured cakes.

Spooks & Chicks

2011-10-20T10:11:00.008+01:00

silkie chick at 5 days

It is cold and Spooks ends ON SUNDAY and I bet it doesn't end with Ruth and Harry going to live together happily ever after in a house in Suffolk with a tortoise in the garden AS IT SHOULD and whatever miserable tragic ending does befall them will DEPRESS ME which is why next time I must be stronger and resist when my husband lures me into YET ANOTHER bloody tv drama.

At least until the cultural fashion for fictional unhappy endings has passed anyway. (I intend to bring about the end of this era myself by becoming a television scriptwriter and churning out dozens of brilliant gripping drama series that conclude in a highly satisfactory fashion with everyone getting his just desserts/oats.)

I am still traumatised by series 4 of The Wire (which was actually worse than the last series). I held out against Spooks for nearly a decade when everyone else and their dog was going on about it (my cousin's wife even did her PhD on it), but then I let my guard down and allowed the combined forces of husband and teenage son ( <- thinks he is going to join MI5. Isn't.) to pressure me into joining at series nine on which I became immediately hooked. So, of course, it was then announced that the tenth series would be the last ever made. I killed Spooks. And now - having already watched the last two - I am left with eight earlier series to catch up with on dvd, already knowing that NO GOOD WILL COME of my emotional investment in the characters and storylines particularly, I strongly suspect, my immense girl-crush on Ruth. I love Ruth. Why doesn't he just KISS HER PROPERLY for god's sake?? Anyway. THAT IS IT. I am not committing to ANYMORE of this nonsense. It's bad enough watching the news without being made to cry over MADE UP STUFF. Ridiculous! *returns to snuffling quietly in corner*

Speaking of Ruths, the non-MI5 one is coming up for the weekend. I love her too, I spose. We are going to see Suz's new house in East Lothian and hopefully pick up an adoptive mum and sibling for the chick who I have just treated for something the internet calls 'pasty butt'. Why would you want to be a top British intelligence agent when you could be at home soaking faeces off of a chicken's arse with cotton wool balls? (I don't know where I went wrong but I suspect it was around about the time I dropped out of my A-levels to 'run a donkey sanctuary'. I distinctly recall my headmaster warning me I would regret this. Sir, you were, as Morrissey says, half-right.)

In order to get the hen to accept a chick that isn't hers, I have to shut them both in a box in a dark place for 24 hours. The only place suitable is the spare room wardrobe so I'm not sure how much sleep Ruth is going to get but it'll be a nice little surprise for her anyway. But really, you should come visit: all excitement, all the time.

We Are Food

2011-10-17T09:23:00.003+01:00

It is at the weekends that it becomes apparent how completely obsessed with food our family is.

The two days rarely pass in anything but a series of food-centred activities, be they growing, buying, preparing or eating.

When we have guests, whether for a long weekend or an hour, we are immediately preoccupied with every detail of what we will feed them. This feels so natural that I sometimes have to step outside and see us through the eyes of a visitor for whom breakfast, lunch and dinner (maybe just one or two of them even!) are merely occasions on which it is necessary to ingest something. Indeed often said guests are horrified at the culinary preferences questionnaire and start muttering about not wanting to cause any trouble. Trouble? How is feeding people trouble?? Now sit down and eat!

As soon as we have a visit in the diary, one of us will ask, 'So what are we doing when X comes?' which always means, 'So what are we doing for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and puddings when X comes?' and there will follow a lengthy debate concering individual tastes and dietary regimes, seasonality, budgets and how to schedule in some opportunities for walking it all off. Even a relatively impromptu having of coffee necessitates a baking plan.

We only entertain people who already know and love us (feeding people isn't so far removed from sleeping with them, after all, and who wants to lay it all out for the unworthy?) so there is never any suggestion that our efforts constitute showing off. That is really only an issue between women anyhow, and we all know I outsource 95% of my baking to the menfolk, but god how I loathe the belief that a woman who bakes is somehow letting down the sisterhood. Sister, if you don't like baking then don't do it. Do some plastering, be a CEO, have lap dancing classes, whatever makes your batter rise. I will bake for the both of us. But please don't be implying that I can't be a feminist and ice a fairy bun. You would be on safer ground suggesting that I can't be a feminist and stay at home teaching my children for no pay but that's a fierce debate we can have over my son's orange and polenta loaf cake and my husband's mocha gateau.

In any case, no-one cooks for credit here: we cook for love, baby. Love of food, love of our guests, love of each other. We don't do anything fancy and sometimes it all goes tits up (see: the great Whisky Mac ~~trifle~~ smoothie disaster of 2006) but usually there is a shed load of very good food on our table. Partly that is luck that we are wealthy and healthy enough to provide it, partly it is our choice to make enjoying food a priority in our lives before drinking, smoking, going out at night or buying consumer goods and partly it is skill and hard work learning to cook, grow a garden and raise animals. I make no apologies for living a life centred on food, particularly since we are always trying to make it less about conspicuous consumption and more about home-grown, foraged or locally and sustainably-produced ingredients.

Of which, we watched the first episode of River Cottage Veg Everyday last night and I can see how it might encourage one to buy the book. I did spend some time yelling at the screen though, because I am not wholly convinced that replacing organic local meat/fish with organic local cheese/eggs is doing a great deal for the planet/animals/our health unless you are a Buddhist or keep ex-battery hens* and a maiden milker goat** in your back garden (which some of us would be more than happy to do...). I suppose from years of being vegan in the past I have little tolerance for the view that meat is murder but dairy and eggs are just fine. Rather than focusing on the concept of vegetarianism - just because it's a convenient label - I would think it more sensible to reduce ALL the animal products one eats. It is ridiculous to make a samphire tart (one of my favourite plant foods by the way) and put it in the oven proclaiming it to be made only from vegetables when it contains vast quantities*** of butter, cream, cheese and eggs, as was shown. MORE ACTUAL PLANT RECIPES PLEASE! Ssh, we don't need to use the v***n word!

And the canteen experiment when polenta fingers faired poorly up against saddle of lamb? Seriously? Don't frighten the habitual meat-eaters with ostentatiously vegetarian food - wean them off it slowly...start making dishes in which meat is just the garnish. Instead of roast saddle of lamb, have a Moroccan mint, pomegranate and couscous salad for everyone, with optional topping of shredded lamb. This vegetarian/non-vegetarian distinction is not helpful - not meat-free Monday, just less meat EVERY day.

It is churlish to be so critical though because, of course, I wholly support the principle of the series which is that meat is horrifically produced because it has to be cheap because we eat so much of it. Don't eat it all the time and it becomes more feasible to pay £15 for a chicken that has been treated with some degree of respect and tastes of actual chicken and isn't pumped full of hormones and water, rather than £2.99 for a factory-farmed bird. And I do know what it's like to raise children as a single parent in an urban flat on fifty quid a week - not fun - but it still wasn't my basic human right to eat cheap meat. Baked potatoes, beans on toast, porridge and wholemeal pasta may not be the last word in nutrition - and as a carbophobe I had to work hard to make them appealing - but they're certainly no worse than living on cheap mince and sausages.

The crucial factor is bringing the kids up to eat plant-based foods. Like all middle class parents, I was very careful to ensure my children ate vegetables from an early age but I wasn't particularly pushy on the beans and pulses front and, as a result, my nine year old considers any meal without an animal protein to be some form of child abuse. He is the only kid in Britain who doesn't like baked beans and he won't even touch hummus or falafals which is surely unheard of for crunchy home-educated offspring? He will eat Quorn but I'm not a huge fan of fake-meat myself and we like to make our food from scratch. Weaning him off bacon and onto banana pancakes of a Saturday morning is my only success so far, though purists might argue that the air-freighted bananas represent a less ethical meal than my butcher's local free-range pigs anyway.

Speaking of which, my love-affair with Morrisons new produce selection ended when we went chutney-ingredient shopping this weekend. £6.99 a kilo for courgettes? £3.99 a kilo for MARROWS? IMPORTED?? Really? In Barbara Kingsolver's world people do drive-by courgette dumping in your porch when you're at church. Everyone who grows [annual] veg has a problem with getting rid of their abundant courgette harvest before it turns into marrows. Chutney-making season is about using up this glut of free or very cheap produce. Not so for us this year. Next spring I either need to befriend an allotmenteer or make space in my perennial edible food forest for growing courgettes and marrows. There will be no more of this PAYING for them.

Anyway, after hauling the fruit and veg home, the husband spent ten hours chopping it all then got up the next morning and spent six hours cooking it in the giant catering pan that covers all four rings on the hob, before sterilising the jars and canning thirty pounds of chutney. Then we took the kids to the beach for morally reprehensible but tasty hot dogs, ice cream and doughnuts. Then the husband cooked roast pork with home-grown spinach for dinner. And we watched River Cottage. Oh, plus we hatched that chicken. Excellent weekend.

*although some may argue that even rehoming ex-bats for free is supporting that industry
** to get your maiden milker somebody somewhere is still going to have a herd of wethers running around/being slaughtered though
*** I have a bit of a thing about this with some of Hugh's recipes anyway - before the show I was looking through our copy of the River Cottage Cookbook and came across the pumpkin soup for 4-6 people which contained 500g of Gruyere and a litre of double cream...

WLTM

2011-10-16T13:54:00.000+01:00

Cute chick seeks company to keep warm at night.

Silkie Chick

2011-10-15T13:56:00.005+01:00

The start of Day 23 and one is finally out. The other two haven't pipped though, twelve hours after this one started. It's very cute - impossbly huge feet with five toes and a top knot of feathers in the silkie fashion. I think it's a partridge. I can't remember what colours the mother hens were but I know the cockerel was golden. Golden, black and partridge, maybe? Although I am really happy to have one, this is the worst case scenario in that now I have a lone(ly) chick to raise and I am unlikely to be able to find same-age ones to buy. That's the problem with the tiny R-Com Mini - with only three eggs in your basket it's always likely that you'll hatch none or one. It is possible to have big gaps between hatches but, given that they're already a couple of days overdue, it's starting to look like the other two have died in shell which is sad.

In the background you can hear my husband making twenty pounds of chutney to Any Questions after the rugby.

Possibly his Perfect Saturday.

If it had been England.

And they'd won.

German, English, Muscovite

2011-10-13T17:20:00.006+01:00

We had the banana meringe gateau (3rd shelf down, 2nd on left), the chocolate truffle cake (same shelf, 2nd on right) and the opera cake (2nd shelf, 3rd on left)

After two recent and unsuccessful attempts to take the kids to the Gullane Falko on a Monday and a Tuesday when they are, apparently, closed, we finally make it to the Edinburgh branch on Wednesday. They were selling bright orange sea buckthorn ice-cream. I wonder if they get their sea buckthorn from Gullane where there is far far too much of it growing?

The husband has a week's leave so we are doing things like having afternoon tea and going to the cinema (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy/Johnny English Reborn).

There is nothing visibly happening in the incubator. I got excited earlier when I thought I saw a crack, but it turned out to be a cat hair stuck to the shell... The husband reminded me that when the incubator was full of quail eggs last spring, I got so pessimistic waiting for them that I went out and bought three bantam hens to cushion the blow. And then all seven quail eggs hatched and the shed was a bit cramped. So instead of buying any adult poultry, I have contented myself with walking to Gorgie City Farm and looking at their Muscovies. I have an ongoing fantasy about turning the side garden into a duck pen and breeding Muscovies.

Like with quail, the males aren't noisy (in fact they are considerably less noisy than male quails) so they can be kept in town. Unlike quail, the females are excellent mothers and can raise their own ducklings. They are supposed to make wonderful eating but that is quite another issue. I do love duck eggs though. Plus the birds are far hardier than hens. So that is my consolation if the silkies don't hatch: Project Muscovy. It will require considerable investment in a duck house, fox-proof enclosure and pond, so isn't for the faint-hearted - neither are the hissing great birds themselves though.

Today's soup was North African spinach. It was okay. The recipe contains chilli, paprika, caraway, mint and a lot of lemon, slightly too much I thought. It gives you terrible bits between your teeth too. Just so you know.

Palaces, Pink Feet & Pork

2011-10-12T09:23:00.001+01:00

The fountain at Linlithgow Palace, in the rain

We have just had a really lovely weekend with the in laws during which we visited Linlithgow Palace and the wonderful Stirling Castle and walked from my beloved Aberlady Nature Reserve to Gullane beach, seeing some of the 20,000 pink footed geese. We had nice lunches everywhere and one evening the husband cooked a huge salmon while another the teenager slow roasted a shoulder of pork.

The Great Hall at Stirling Castle, in the sunshine

We are so incredibly lucky to be able to spend our time in medieval castles and neolithic monuments and renaissance palaces. My children take them entirely for granted which, in itself, is quite cool.

Our next guests are Ruth for our weekend with Suz, then Dr Sian AND HER BABIES.

The chicks are due to hatch in 48 hours, no pipping yet.

I still have an essay to write.

Smart-Phone Epiphanies for the Socially-Inept

2011-10-10T18:30:00.019+01:00

Ravioli of West Coast shellfish served in a crab consomme at The Kitchin, discreetly photographed on phone

Despite much swearing and Naomi Campbell-style (what am I talking about? Gordon Brown-style is probably more like it) phone-hurling I have finally made peace with the Samsung touch screen after its impossible keypad revealed three wisdoms to me:

Touch Screen Epiphany # 1

If not being able to send double-figured multi-texts several times a day is causing a sense of isolation, there is something wrong with your emotional life.

It occurred to me that my refusal to refer to anyone as 'my friend' until I have known them twenty-five years and thrown up on their lap, is just plain wrong. With that came the realisation that after fifteen years in Scotland, I have 'acquaintances' up here that I have actually spent far more time with than some of the 'friends' back down south to whom I still cling electronically. And whilst I may not have thrown up on the newbies, that is because I am no longer a teenager. Instead I have probably had some sort of minor parenting breakdown on their shoulder, which is just as bonding. Also, I actually SEE them. I TOUCH them. I eat their cake. They are, in fact, my friends. I just didn't realise it until I couldn't use my phone anymore. They were magically still there, outside the phone, while the others just disappeared. I'm sure this is all very obvious to normal people.

So I have upgraded my 3D relationships and stopped painstakingly trying to tap out love letters to the distant and the departed every day. Love the one you're with. Exceptions apply (you know, like if you're actually reading this crap.)

Touch Screen Epiphany # 2

If you can express yourself better through the written word than the spoken, you need to get better at talking.

For my entire life I have accepted the fact that writing is my medium. I can express anything at anytime to anyone in writing, with no forethought or drafting and very little time or attention.Whereas I usually talk complete bollocks. It is more natural for me to write it than to say it. I am verbally incontinent and words that obey the rules of communication on the page refuse to do as they should in my mouth. Vocally, I am either loud, inappropriate and potty-mouthed or - very occasionally - shy, awkward and embarrassed, neither of which typing permits. The written me is so much nicer. I feel closer to people with whom I communicate mostly by writing, because I think they know The Real Me. Actually they just know a nicer version of me: one I would prefer to be. My fingers are ghost writers; my lips are illiterate Z-list celebrities. But I have never before considered the fact that it might be within my power to change this, that if I stopped resorting to writing as a fallback fast track to intimacy, I would be forced to improve my other means of communication instead.

So I am trying not to write it down. I am trying to tell you face to face. Be patient.

Touch Screen Epiphany # 3

Keyboards take up the space you have for reading.

Touch screen keypads mean you free up room for a great big screen on which to use your Kindle app. Old skool keyboards make it easier to write and harder to read. Just like how it's easier to talk and harder to listen. As previously discussed, I do way too much writing anyway; I need to read more. My husband - who is my actual hero and I don't care if that makes you want to throw up - carries a book (or a Kindle app) everywhere he goes. He can't go for a pint of milk without a 700 page novel in his jacket pocket in case of an emergency in which he is may be left without reading material for six seconds. He carries a newspaper on hikes. I read a book or two a week but in a structured way at prescribed Reading Times. My spare moment occupation of choice is always writing. I text (double-figured multi-texts) all the way through bus journeys and supermarket queues and I am far more likely to carry a notebook and pen than a novel. But nothing is worse than someone who talks without listening. Plus I have never been able to write fiction, most likely because I don't read enough of it.

So I need to read more.Writing less gives you more space for reading. And listening.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is time to let go of people who haven't really been there for years anyway, to stop hiding behind the written word and to oppose my opposable thumbs. I hereby reject SMS and instead embrace books and conversation and you. Let's have dinner. I will need to text you the address of the restaurant but I can do that even on a touch screen....

Beetroot Day

2011-10-07T16:50:00.007+01:00

God, I love beetroot.

This is the beetroot brownie mixture from Hugh's recipe. I haven't tried them yet so they might be absolutely revolting but the mixture tasted very nice. Chocolate coleslaw. I would always prefer to eat cake mixture than actual cake though so I am unreliable. I blame my grandfather - he used to feed me spoonfuls of butter and sugar as a child. And he made me cups of tea from the age of two. My grandad was actually a great home baker and made wonderful pastry which wasn't something you could say of many manual workers of

his generation.

My dad only only really cooked soups. He had an allotment and would chuck all sorts of vegetables into the cauldron.

The borscht is good and the teenager baked a loaf to go with it. I completely take it for granted that I can subcontract baking at a moment's notice on a daily basis. Apparently in some homes if you want a freshly baked loaf you have to do it yourself but I come from a long-line of ladies who know how to delegate in the kitchen.

Now I am on wood pigeon protection patrol. Not because I am especially fond of wood pigeons but because my husband has just gone to the airport to pick up his parents and my mother-in-law has a phobia of birds, in particular, their feathers. Atticus brought in his 6th and 7th wood pigeon kills AS A PAIR this week and there has been a live one feeding on the lawn for the past hour. I have been trying to find the bloody cat and shut him indoors for the night but he is obviously lurking somewhere completely still, waiting. If he moved I would hear him because he now has FIVE - count 'em - bells on his collar and cannot pounce without sounding like Rudolph and his team of seasonal pack animals. I conclude that wood pigeons - by far his prey of choice - are either profoundly deaf or very very stupid. Probably they are so fat from gorging themselves on my crops that they just can't get airborne in time to avoid his deadly claws.

Anyway, nothing would be more Atticus than for him to prepare a little tabby surprise via the kitchen cat flap - namely a flapping, bleeding bird he has tortured half to death, shedding feathers and internal organs all over the dining table - in the time it takes me to walk to the front door, kiss my parents-in-law, and lead them in for supper. SO I AM WATCHING.

The Art of Urban Walking

2011-10-06T10:40:00.002+01:00

Christopher Boffoli's Disparity makes me squeal. Some of them are inexplicably hilarious and others just lose me to fantasies about climbing giant chocolate eclairs (whilst of course highlighting the obscenity of gluttony, or something).

Miniatures are so compelling. We are currently building a miniature WWII British house with Anderson shelter, blackout curtains and Dig for Victory vegetable garden. There will need to be chickens and rabbits too of course. The teenager is building a miniature WWI trench, no doubt complete with rats and extreme despair. (I had forgotten how sad the last scene of Blackadder Goes Forth is.)

In the between-deluges sunshine, I took a long-cut along the Water of Leith the other day. I don't remember seeing this man before; he is outside the Dean Gallery, by the World Aids Day plaque. I shall have to find the others now.

Walking through urban green spaces is in my top three preferred activities in life. Although I love wild remote places they require much in the way of preparation and supplies. The city is my natural element and I can walk in it for twelve hours at a stretch with only my debit card and a Burt's Bees honey lip balm. It is impossible to get lost but I always find some new wynd or gardens I've never seen; I don't have to pass the time of day with anyone but there are thousands of people to talk to should I choose (and I often do); there are constant opportunities to buy snacks and also several tonnes of blackberries growing for free. There is also, I suspect, a lot more wildlife than in some rural areas.

I live in the city because I love walking. A rural home would probably require a car. I have friends in the country who can't even exit their houses without a car because the roads they live on are unpaved and too narrow to be safe for pedestrians. I would go completely insane if I were dependent on a car for transport.

Plus Edinburgh has superlative open spaces: not only a river but miles of beach, a mountain, moorland, volcanic hills and crags. But it also has tiny winding cobbled streets and wide Georgian squares to promenade and I find them just as necessary. In the frequently foul weather I can even walk for many happy hours through the Botanics glasshouses, the museums and the galleries.

When I was growing up I walked London in a similar way, the difference being that I have still only covered a tiny part of that city. When I met my husband he was walking the Thames path - I mean, I didn't bump into him en route, although had I done I would most surely have brought him straight back home with me, he was in the process of covering it at weekends with friends - and I took this as an excellent sign of his suitability. That and the fact that every walk involved food at all stages.

The teenager is wedded to his mountain bike but will hike. The nine year old will only walk if there is a hefty picnic and Kendal mint cake available at all times. He is the only person I know who can climb a mountain and still be in calorie credit.

I am infamous for tricking people into walking long distances by continually adding new stages to the journey. 'Shall we just walk to the next bus stop?' is my secret code for 'We will be walking the nine miles home, honey'. People are routinely amazed at the distances I have travelled on foot to get to them. Their amazement, in turn, amazes me. It's like Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods, astonishing a crowd of onlookers by telling them that he and his friend will be using their legs to propel themselves across the landscape.

Nothing is more puzzling to me than a shoe you can't walk in.

I Shall Eat Purple

2011-10-05T16:02:00.007+01:00

The roasted aubergine soup was very boring. I make soup to disguise textures of which I am not fond (I am very fussy about the texture of food - I don't like anything floury or dry) and to quickly transport into my mouth foods I would get bored eating otherwise (pulses, beans...). I love aubergines. I love the texture of them and I could eat them every day so why would I make them into soup? Especially watery, overtly passatta-y, (I am deeply prejudiced against cooked tomato sauces anyway. Don't worry, I keep all these things to myself when invited to dinner...) dull soup. I can just grill or fry the great purple organ and eat it as it is. Lesson learnt.

Or I can make Baba ganoush, which loses nothing of the aubergine and enables one to coat other less godly foods - bread, say - and thus elevate them. Genius. Aubergenius.

While I had the barbecue going (I have learnt this year that a barbecue is not just an event to which one invites people when the temperature is over 18°C but also apparatus for cooking food, regardless of the weather - within reason - or audience, that requires a smoky taste) I charred two bananas and had them with brown sugar.

But now I must relinquish the fruits of summer and return to my roots. My beetroots. They make me think of Jitterbug Perfume.

Soup & Salad

2011-10-03T18:26:00.000+01:00

I am now Chef de Légumes chez nous and today I have made candy beetroot salad and roasted tomato and garlic soup.

I have identified two major errors in the SOUP Works book already. The sweetcorn chowder contains no mention of sweetcorn anywhere except the title and the Zimbabwean peanut and red pepper makes a big deal of the need for dried shrimp but then neglects to include it anywhere in the recipe. Luckily, as we know, I am not a slave to a recipe (that is something of an understatement: basically I read the name of the dish and make the rest up as I go along - DO NOT OPPRESS ME WITH YOUR RULES even if they do make the food taste a bit nicer...). That is why this tomato soup does not contain garlic paste or basil or potato but does make use of a roasted garlic bulb and home-grown majoram. It was very good too.

Next: roast aubergine soup and baba ganoush - which I could practically live on - and Hugh's beetroot brownies.

My Eggs Are Fertilised!

2011-10-02T09:37:00.013+01:00

Egg skelter, a birthday present from my lovely in laws

I candled (not mine in the clip, just an example) my eggs and they're all developing! One seems to be moving less than the others, not sure what that means, but all have clearly visible embryos and two are swimming madly around inside, which was surprisingly thrilling to watch. Eleven days left until hatch! I hope they'll make it.

The other night I saw a fox and three grown cubs and had loving feelings towards them because I am a ~~soft city sap~~ GOOD PERSON (who doesn't make their living from poultry).

It is nearly time for Autumnwatch! In this house, Chris Packham is referred to as My Other Husband so when he wrote about ways to stop your cat massacring the local birdlife, I dutifully followed them (I put my hands over my ears when he talks about not having children). I already have my cats neutered and keep them in at night but the kitten - with so many bells on his collar he looks like a bloody Christmas tree - still managed to kill dozens of birds this summer. So when I read about these 'new electronic bleepers' I immediately looked them up online. The first one I found was the Cat Alert collar which emits a beep every 7 seconds. You can switch it off or have it switch off automatically when it gets dark but I am insanely noise-sensitive and this would drive me out of my tree all day; god knows what it would do to my cat. So I went for the Liberator which has a motion sensor meaning it only emits the beep when the cat is pouncing around. Almost immediately after ordering it I realised it was going to be rubbish and I wasn't wrong. For a start it isn't on a quick release collar like the Cat Alert. Why would I put a collar without quick release on my cat? It's elasticated so it won't hang him but he could easily get a foreleg trapped and injured as commonly happens. Secondly, the sensor is useless and hardly goes off at all - he could bring down a barn owl and wrestle with it for ten minutes without eliciting a single beep. Pah. I am hoping he just might have grown less hunty by spring. In future I am only adopting two legged cats with no heads.

I remarked to my actual husband that I was looking forward to Christmas because I am craving Creme Eggs which, traditionally, go on sale the second the Lindt chocolate reindeers come down on Christmas Eve. But yesterday I found the Screme Egg (see aove) which is exactly the same but has a green yolk, for Halloween. My disapproval didn't stop me buying five....

The seasons have gone mad anyway. It is 30°C in much of England, no more than a couple of hundred miles away, but a mere 13°C here. To be fair it did get up to the mid-twenties on Friday and I arranged an impromptu bbq. It was only when marinating the ribs, chicken, Sicilian aubergine, round courgettes and white peppers (thank you, Morrisons) and waiting for Dr and Mrs Suz (and the vast bump) to arrive from work, that I remembered it gets dark at 6.30pm now. So we sat out around the charcoal in the pitch black until 10pm, wearing t-shirts and watching bats in the manner of a sort of Antipodean Guy Fawkes night.

The weekend has been damp and misty and - today - pouring with rain, so properly autumnal. I love autumn. The husband made a big fish curry yesterday and today we are having lamb with salsa verde, which doesn't immediately scream autumn but that's what happens when your grocery shopping is confined to the reduced section because you are KEEPING IT REAL. Our huntin', fishin' neighbour who has previously gifted us braces of pheasants and boxes of cod, presented up with a huge salmon the other day. We agreed it is time to start baking him some serious cakeage.

We have guests all next week - the teenager's dad and then the my lovely in-laws - so there will be a lot more eating and thus some serious winter fat storage going on, no doubt. Also I have an essay to write first which is why I am, instead, writing a tedious blog post about Creme eggs and Chris Packham. Must stop this.

Growth Spurts

2011-09-29T18:53:00.018+01:00

You remember the comfrey I planted, of course?

Look at it now!

My strawberries have gone insane, eaten the lingonberries and cloudberries and are on their way to consuming the blueberries, cherry, plum, quince and paving stones too. Somebody needs to stop them. Probably me.

Elsewhere, the new raspberry canes produced a few handfuls of delicious fruit and I planted 120 bronze and lavender violas and 100 native bluebell and snowbell bulbs. Caterpillars have turned my lovely perennial nine star broccoli into lacework but hopefully it will survive. The sea kale continues to be one step behind the slugs.

But my chard is so beautiful that it is the wallpaper on this detestable new (to me) smart phone I have. It is the only thing about the phone I actually like. I could write a novel by text on my old (broken) phone with its lovely clunky BUTTONS but on this one I can only answer queries with 'y' or 'n' and frankly that takes too much effort. I have a device that can divine for water, give me an MRI at the bus stop and vapourise anyone I don't like, but apparently I can't make a phone call or send a text without spending ten minutes fiddling with the touch-screen. And that's if my fingers are warm enough to be recognised. Bah. I wouldn't mind but I can't even have the Kindle app. I am this close *pinches thumb and forefinger together meanly* to going pre-tech and only talking to my neighbours and dog walkers for the rest of my life. YEAH.

I have taken advantage of the unseasonable weather to stain the (as yet theoretical) chicken's grazing run cornflower blue to match the guinea pigs' one. Ewok the special ferret has recently being staying up at night partying ('partying' for Ewok involves crawling underneath his cat litter tray, raising it onto his back and banging it against the top of his cage repeatedly) and spending his days furiously digging, burrowing and throwing things around like a cartoon Tasmanian Devil. I suspected his hormonal castration implant had worn off and, when I gave him a bath yesterday, this was confirmed by the level of, shall we say, excitement he expressed. So I booked him in for another Suprelorin straight away. Sadly the vet declined to implant one in my teenage son at the same time.

Too Cool

2011-09-28T17:06:00.000+01:00

Of course, during the freak mini-heatwave the home ed group would be committed to hall hire and the spending of several hours surrounded by sweaty plastic. Just as the last two beach trips I have tried to organise have fallen on hurricanes. Climate-induced spontaneity can be difficult en masse though.

Anyway, I had the teenager make me a candler for my silkie eggs so it's not all bad.

Occasionally I drop in on Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist blog because, you know, a career is an exotic and foreign thing as far as I am concerned and I enjoy marvelling at them from a distance like I might Amur tigers. Imagine my disbelief then, when I find out that Penelope Trunk has started home-schooling. She even has a new blog about it. I felt like the world had shifted on its axis a little.

Having been quietly getting on with it for over a decade now, I often forget how weird and scary most people find the idea of not sending their kids to school. Some even feel so strongly that they equate it with child abuse and wish to prevent anyone else from doing it, which seems very odd to me when I look at my kids happily getting on with their lives in the world. But La Femme Follette once said that home-educating (as we call it in the UK) is the most radical thing you can do whilst still living in the city and carrying a good handbag and I tend to agree.

There is nothing to be scared of though: we come in peace, armed only with a great many craft supplies, lab materials and museum season tickets. We may sometimes seem tetchy when asked:
- no school today?
- but what about socialising?
- are you a qualified teacher?
- can you really do maths/science? (accompanied by awestruck expression as if the ability of a grown woman to do algebra were some kind of dark magic)
but that is because we are asked these questions by every single person we meet, every single time we leave our houses between the hours of 9am and 3.30pm (which is every day) and after a few years IT GETS OLD.

Also, there isn't really a 'we' at all. Home-educators do it for diametrically opposing reasons using dramatically diverse techniques so it is impossible to have an opinion about 'us' as a whole unless you believe that school - any school, from Eton to failing inner city comprehensives - is fundamentally better or worse than not-school, whatever that entails. It's like being committed to opposing or championing panini over toasties - any panini? Any toastie? I'm more interested in the skill of the chef and the quality of the ingredients.

I might be happy to send my kids to a brilliant (affordable) school and am always sad to see children being taught creationism at home (which doesn't mean I would seek to outlaw it). My thorough cost/benefit analysis of our own situation has concluded that the current best use of our resources is enabling the kids to learn outwith the formal system. I'm not evangelistic but neither am I apologetic and I am fiercely protective of our right to make that choice.

Vegetables

2011-09-27T19:08:00.002+01:00

So yeah, supermarkets are rubbish and those of us who aren't totally self-sufficient should be buying our weekly shop from farmers' markets and artisan delis, but anyway: I was in Morrison's earlier and IT WAS AMAZING! Apparently they are trialling a new produce section because I felt like I had accidentally walked into Borough Market.

Amongst the many many vegetables I saw were:
horseradish roots
fresh turmeric
water chestnuts
plantain
half a dozen aubergine varieties
heirloom tomatoes of all kinds
four colours of beetroot
wild and exotic mushrooms I HADN'T HEARD OF
and even basic stuff that they never sell like several different types of kale and chard

Okay so there was Peruvian white asparagus and no real attempt to go for local or seasonal but, god, it was exciting to see so many vegetables. I got a bit emotional and had to take myself off to the bin bags aisle and get a grip.

Let me remind you that this is in Scotland. THREE TYPES OF KALE!

Of course, when they don't sell any of it they'll be going back to iceberg lettuce and King Edwards but I made an effort and, in addition to the above tomatoes, bought some girolles. At £30 a kg I'll have to start looking out for them in the reduced rack any day now.

This is timely as I am currently on a hardcore veggie soup-making mission.

Here is butternut squash and red pepper from the SOUP Works book (which always makes me think of changeworks) from which I intend to follow (very very loosely) several more recipes such as Zimbabwean peanut and red pepper, dhal (soup version), North Africa Spinach and their borscht but then I wish to acquire the Dorling Kindersley Soup Book which has superior indexing. I love Dorling Kindersley books. Everything is right with the world inside a DK book.

I looked through Hugh's veg book in Waterstones but pretty much every dish fell into the category of:

- heavy on dairy/carbs

- nine year old won't eat

- already making

although it did inspire/remind us to do a very nice spanokopita yesterday. Thanks, Hugh.

Dogged

2011-09-26T09:03:00.009+01:00

I had eaten this earlier in the day...maybe I smelt like pulled pork?

I was walking down the street with the husband the other day, happily minding my own business, when I felt what was clearly a bear trap suddenly close hard on the back of my calf. I screamed and turned round but there didn't seem to be anything behind me to explain the pain, just a big collie-mix dog tied innocently outside a shop. I actually had to ask my husband, disbelievingly, 'Did that dog just BITE me??' because a) I hadn't even seen a dog and b) there was no snarling or growling or barking - it just leapt out and bit me with no warning whatsoever, then backed off.

My leg really hurt but when I pulled my trouser up there were only a few puncture wounds - no tearing - that were already starting to swell and bruise. Someone nearby started getting excited about the dog having bitten another passer by earlier and then its owner came out of the shop and mumbled, 'Sorry', and made haste to be gone with his dog. There was not much to be done but keep right on walking home in order to clean it properly (my good friend's mum having nearly died of septacaemia after a minor dog bite...) and put it up.

It was weird though - I've been bitten by dogs before, including ones I've owned, and I'm quite dog-savvy and good at reading them and diffusing situations, but this just came from nowhere. Although I hadn't seen the dog, my husband - walking behind me - confirmed that I hadn't walked close by it either, but I had paused to wait for him and maybe that's what it took exception to. It had been left with a bag and was clearly on guard duty. But, god, a growl would have sufficed! No need to just go straight for the attack! It wasn't just a snap either, I mean, clearly if it had wanted to savage me it would have half my calf muscle in its stomach right now, it was just a couple of warning bites* - either out of possessiveness or fear - but still, they were hard bites: my leg is black and blue! I was really surprised. Shocked is overdoing it a bit; it was just a strange occurrence with quite sore consequences.

It kind of pissed me off too (apart from the obvious irritation at owners leaving known biters tied outside shops) because I always try to act appropriately around dogs and I am informed, educated and experienced with them; I don't approach strange dogs or even give them eye contact or infringe on their personal space. I had just failed to see this one and walk to the very edge of the pavement to be out of its lead-reach in case it should want to spontaneously bite me without any sort of warning, which is not a reasonable expectation in a public place anyway! It was one of those random accidents that could have happened to anyone - but I think fate is being very unfair having it happen to ME. Still at least it was me not my child. If that had happened then things would have gone down very differently.

Canid family: sort it out! First one of your foxes eats my chickens and now your domestic dogs are gnawing on me! What have I ever done to you but clean up after incontinent retired racing greyhounds and join the Hunt Saboteurs?? I AM CURRENTLY READING IN DEFENSE OF DOGS FOR GOD'S SAKE! Back off!

*(Reminds me of Bill Bryson in A Walk in the Woods quoting Stephen Herrero's Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance - which I also own - where the latter talks about 'light bites' and Bryson points out that light bites from a bear are not exactly playful gummy nips!)

All Aboard For Chicken Fail #3

2011-09-23T11:05:00.001+01:00

I am back on the horse! And not even in hunting pink and riding to hounds! Although I did give a very stern look to the fox in the street the other morning and that'll learn him.

It has to be said that it isn't incredibly likely that these eggs are fertile. Cockerels are winding down for winter and probably more interested in snuzzling up on the perch with their ladiez than giving them a good seeing too. Even if any of the eggs were fertile, there is the journey via our Royal Mail to factor in. They did arrive intact and have had 24 hours to settle, blunt end up, but it is not ideal. That said, recall my 5/7 hatch from posted quail eggs earlier this year: there is hope. This time I can candle the eggs at Day 10 and check if they are developing or not, which you can't do with quail eggs because they are too heavily pigmented to see anything. Even if there are embryos and no power cuts, they still have to grow and hatch normally then survive chickhood.

I have since learnt that silkies (those are not Muppets, I swear) are often born with something called a 'vaulted skull' which means a portion of their brain is uncovered leaving them vulnerable to injury. I am not particularly enthusiastic about the possibility of that. If we do master avian neurosurgery or simply bypass all of these calamities we still have a less than 50% chance of the resulting fowl being a female that we can keep. But all of this is why fertile silkie eggs are £1 each and point of lay silkie hens are £45 each. It takes a lot to raise a healthy adult bird, especially when you don't have the mum and dad to help. We'll see how we go. I am prepared for none, for some and for a lone chick who is going to have to live in the kitchen* until spring when either she has to hatch out her own siblings or he has to go and live with one of my rural friends (eating not an option for a kitchen cockerel). I am in the saddle, baby!

*There is absolutely no need for anyone to mention this to my husband yet. He probably won't even notice. Hush.

Chicken Fail #2

2011-09-21T08:17:00.009+01:00

Garden salad; trug is a birthday present from my sister

Not quite sure what is going on with me and chickens now but it seems ill-fated.

Having moved the coop right next to the kitchen door, it now has security lights over it until we go to bed, people at the kitchen window right above it all evening, cats banging in and out of the cat flap beside it and the presence of the dog nearby. Also we have to walk past it every time we go to the freezer, put rubbish out or get a bike, meaning it will be virtually impossible to forget to shut it at sunset. Plus I got out the old grazing run that I stopped using in favour of free-ranging. The coop comes with a run which is ridiculously tiny - 10 sq ft, which is enough space for ONE chicken - so they can be moved into the 20 sq ft grazing run in the day as long as it isn't too wet on the grass (depending on the breed - Silkies' feathers can't manage getting wet and Dumpies* can get chilled because their bodies are so close to the ground). They can still free range as long as someone is in the garden; I'm not taking any chances in winter because the fox is around all the time. I am experimenting with the dog's guarding capabilities - the only flaw being that she is terrified of chickens.

So I think the fox situation is pretty well covered now and I'm ready to have another go. But maybe I am just trying to get back on the horse too early because the universe does not seem sympathetic? Decide for yourselves:

1. I look at some red partridge Pekins (I love everything about that photo) that come up for sale. I decide I might be ready for more chickens but I can't quite face more Pekins just yet.

2. I bid on silkie hatching eggs. I lose.

3. I pursue three free pampered ex-bats who need rehoming. I am pipped to the post.

4. I call a highly recommended silkie breeder. Her phone gives nothing but the engaged tone for five days.

5. I email seven other silkie breeders from the poultry ads and none have at least two non-white hens for sale. (In stark contrast to the rest of the world, I do not like white animals. Shelters are full of black dogs and cats because nobody wants them. Everybody prefers white. Not me.)

6. I arrange to buy three silkie hatching eggs for my tiny incubator, followed by another three next month, just before fertility completely runs out. I then realise my incubator only has the quail egg tray and I cannot find the chicken egg tray for sale ANYWHERE..

One can always go to the garden centre and buy a couple of hens but integrating free-ranging hens into an edible forest garden only works if they aren't big diggers, which means they have to have either feathery feet (Pekins and Silkies) or short legs (Scots Dumpies) and those breeds are much harder to obtain. Pekins are the easiest but at the moment I still go a bit sniffly every time I see one so that would be embarrassing. Scots Dumpies are actually so rare they're endangered and, as we have seen, I have spoken to everybody who has ever looked at a Silkie. Breeding season is over, fertility is plummeting and laying is slowing down. I should probably just wait until spring, right?

On the other hand, I watched the trailer for Contagion (before Cowboys and Aliens which is rubbish, as if you needed me to tell you) the other day and, fuelled by my husband's professional life in bird flu pandemics, it made me a bit relieved to be poultry-free....

*Yes, there are chickens called Dumpies, oh grow up.

UPDATE
Anyone who happens to be reading this and owns the R-Com Mini will presumably be going, 'What the...?' since there IS NO R-Com Mini chicken egg tray because the R-Com Mini unit COMES READY-MADE with an internal chicken egg tray. I only just realised that. I probably shouldn't be allowed to be responsible for other living things or electrical appliances. Anyway, the inky is set up and the three silkie eggs are in the post! Allowing for a generous 50% hatch rate an an even more generous 50% hen rate, I can expect to raise 0.75 silkie hens! Woo! Chicken Fail #3 ahoy!

You'll Have Had Your Tea

2011-09-16T18:22:00.003+01:00

Spot the Little Housewife's Dairsie jam!

It is the September weekend in Edinburgh, I have no idea where else. I have lived in Scotland for fifteen years and still struggle to remember the holidays. Many are different to the English Bank Holidays primarily, as far as I can work out, because THIS IS SCOTLAND AND WE ARE A WHOLE DIFFERENT COUNTRY AND WE HAVE DIFFERENT BANK NOTES AND NOT ONLY DIFFERENT LAWS BUT AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LEGAL SYSTEM BECAUSE WE CAN. So that. Also they differ within Scotland from authority to authority. Added to this, many UK-wide businesses in Scotland opt out altogether for the sake of unity and follow the English holidays instead. In England there is only one sort of holiday: the Bank Holiday, characterised by everyone who doesn't work in retail having the day off, no school, no banks, no Post Offices and no government/local authority institutions being open and compulsory attendance at garden centres. In Scotland there are bank holidays, public holidays, local holidays and trade holidays and I have no idea who shuts on what. Also gardening is not the national religion here and it's too cold for barbecues so god knows what the point is anyway. Since I don't do work or school it doesn't really matter I suppose. It does seem like anarchy to an Englishwoman abroad but I'm sure they have a perfectly good system in operation.

My delightful husband pointed out to me that what I wrote about stress caused by other people's parenting could be interpreted as conflict between he and I, particularly as it concludes with him going off to his bees and me brooding. So let me assure you, concerned reader, that my husband and I are - and have always been - as one on the domestic front. And the international front, come to that. The only things we disagree on are art and sport. And dried fruit in chutney. You do need some friction in a marriage after all, or there's no sensation.

We have just had our semi-regular familial phone hand-down. The husband has a new one because he is the ~~head of the household~~ only one of us who can be bothered to do the research, I have his old smart phone and the teenager has my broken camera'd Sony Ericsson which he doesn't even need because he is grounded for the rest of his life anyway. (We don't trickle down as far as the little kid yet.) The point is, I have a camera in my pocket again so expect an increase in even worse quality opportunist photos. Also, internet on the bus: hello! Let's kiss, as La Femme says.

As you can see, I am currently dealing with the gardening/food blog vs. writing-about-rest-of-life discrepancy by tagging this post fauna because, you know: you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals.

Today we invited a neighbour from my first flat in Edinburgh round for afternoon tea (the husband's scones, home-made jam and own hive honey, the teenager's fairy cakes and my white sliced crustless ham sandwiches and freezer vol-au-vents letting the side down) with her lovely kids aged 4, 6 and 8. She had her first child fourteen years later than me but had soon zoomed ahead to a third whilst my ovaries were taking a nap, hare-style. At the moment I am slightly obsessed with families of three children. The jump between two and three feels like the difference between a meeting and a party. Or possibly the gap between sanity and diazepam. How many kids do you have? How many would you like to have/had had? (And no, it's still not socially acceptable for the latter number to be less than the former, sorry...)

When I taught baby massage, a client told me of a friend who had three boys and decided to try for one last baby. She gave birth to triplet boys. I carry this story with me, in my heart and womb.

Stable Doors

2011-09-14T07:23:00.007+01:00

I had been meaning to write, at some point, about how well having chickens was working out over quail. The amount of layers pellets they consume is so tiny compared to the vast quantities of turkey chick crumbs that the quail bathed in and left everywhere and most of their poo is neatly deposited under their night perches, ready for easy daily removal rather than smeared all over their food and water, quail style. Having them free ranging in the garden is just a delight and apart from stripping all the soft fruit, they don't seem to do any damage at all. Pol has been broody for nearly the entire summer but Dora had learnt to come when I call and I have been training her to tap on the kitchen cat flap each morning for Marmite toast. They are the sweetest loveliest little birds and no trouble at all.

Or, as you can see, were.

I always said I could only keep chickens in our area because I had a large brick built shed but once the birds were spending most of their time in the garden it seemed wasteful to also keep sixty square feet of straw for them. So I moved our ferrets - who had been becoming increasingly incontinent - out of our house and into the shed and got a coop for the chickens to sleep in. I was very nervous about the new coop but it had been rigorously fox-proofed by an urban hen keeper and was on concrete to prevent digging. And it did prove impenetrable. AS LONG AS I REMEMBERED TO SHUT THE BLOODY DOOR AT NIGHT.

Last night was the first and only time I forgot. By 10pm - when I remembered - there was nothing left of my lovely girls but two big piles of soft fluffy lavender and bronze feathers. Their coop was right outside the room we had been in and nobody heard a sound. I hope that this means their necks were broken before they were even properly awake.

I was completely unprepared for how upset I would be. I mean, I eat chickens, right? I'm not a vegetarian - I buy chickens that have been killed and I eat them. I know to most people who don't eat meat it must be hard to understand why the loss of some birds is apparently acceptable while others are mourned. It's not rational or sensible but I knew these birds and, it transpires, loved them. After searching the garden repeatedly in case they were hiding still alive or terribly injured somewhere, I went indoors and HOWLED for longer than I have done over any animal I've ever lost (excepting the four long days my cat was locked in a neighbour's coal cellar maybe). I think that is the point - I have never lost an animal, in thirty years of ownership, through my own neglect before and this was absolutely entirely my own stupid fault. I might as well have served them up on a platter with fries and coleslaw to the neigbourhood foxes. They were completely helpless, virtually flightless, and trapped in a box with only one exit, which I left open for a fox to block. That fox has been watching and waiting for nearly two years. He shits right by them every night. He knew his time would come. (I love foxes but today, just today I hope, I am ready to start up the East Edinburgh Hunt.)

All through the night I kept thinking I could hear Dora's alarm call telling me to come and rescue her, but it was just the seagulls.

I had been intending to put fertile Pekin eggs under Dora and Pol in spring and build the flock up but I was very worried about them making it through the winter. I only really have one setting for animals I own and that is Family Member: Indoor. I don't like anyone I love to be out in the snow; I have never pretended to be a farmer. At least they won't be cold now.

I feel simultaneously lost without my chooks at the back door and but also unable to imagine having any more because surely they will just meet the same fate eventually. I will forget again - it gets dark here at 3pm in winter - and now he's had a decent meal the fox will come back in the daytime anyway. They wouldn't be safe free ranging anymore and what sort of life would it be stuck in a coop all day? Or even in the shed? Now I've seen them outside, I know that's where they're happy. Until they get eaten. No more chickens though? That seems a very sad state of affairs indeed.

It wouldn't be so bad if I had my wild birds but the kitten has scared away every one. At least we saw the frog again last night while we were searching for body parts.

Earlier in the week, the tail end of Hurrican Katia tore down my wedding present apple tree. The one that was doing so well and was consequently heavy with fruit. I should have taken all the apples off when the storms were forecast. I should have shut the coop.

Sea Change

2011-09-03T15:55:00.009+01:00

Autumn has arrived in full. It is much cooler and much windier - several of my Jukes have blown down already.

There is still loads to do in the garden - mainly weeding the highly unproductive shady area that produced only one out of twenty-eight scorzonera and some very feeble ramsons and bilberries. The violas did quite well though, in spite of the slugs, and I am going to plant more in all the gaps. I will try again with ramson and snowdrop bulbs this month and plant native bluebell bulbs when the nigella has died right back. In spring I'll try again with the scorzonera (and asparagus).

Around the rowan tree, Good King Henry, sorrel, corn salad and wild rocket are growing well and hopefully some will last through the winter along with the appearance of the winter purslane.

On the whole, it is actually starting to resemble - to be - a proper edible forest garden with layers of fruit/nut trees, shrubs, vegetables/herbs and strawberry ground cover, and brambles and nasturtium climbing anywhere they can.At the beginning of the year I noted that I didn't think there would be a lot more to say about the garden and I don't think there really has been. It's lovely; it changes with the seasons. I don't need to detail every crop.

I also noted that I was trying to improve my eating habits after a lot of starchy and dairy foods that were making me ill. This had a more far-reaching effect than I had imagined. After half a year I ended up with a lot more energy and a lot less body fat, both of which made me want to continue with it. (Much as I loathe the boring and oppressive obsession with women's skinniness, my body shape is one with very little in the way of T&A and no waist whatsoever - this is a look, uncommon to that of the vast majority of other women, that just doesn't rock curvy and looks much better lean.) As a result I find that food I am writing about - usually baked goods or cheeses - is sometimes food I have neither made nor even eaten myself, and that just seems pointless and also a bit unhealthy/vicarious/obsessive? The food I make for myself is so simple that it would be like tweeting I was about to make an omlette. I tend to only note it when it is involves an uncommon ingredient. You know, like deer heart or octopus (which is NOT calamari, remember!) and whilst I know my blog might give the impression we eat like that every day - we do not. There are a lot of omlettes, sausages, chicken thighs AND SOMETIMES EVEN FROZEN PEAS. Boring!

An unforseen sea change this year - which may be related to feeling so healthy and energetic - has been my sudden renewed interest in extending the family through reproductive measures rather than the acquisition of non-human members. Of course, nothing will be done about this but it has meant I haven't been quite so satisfied with infantising domesticated animals nor recording their every move. I still love to post about wildlife I have seen and places we have been but - like offal and seafood - this isn't a daily occurrence and writing is something I do every day. (I only realised relatively recently that not everyone has to write every day. I still don't quite believe it.) I tend towards the all or nothing - if I am blogging then I will do it often or not at all. I can't imagine posting irregularly but maybe I will try it now.

This year it became apparent that my kids and home-educating were starting to creep in here and that parenting was often what I felt more inclined to detail. I used to write a blog solely on that subject called Herding Ferrets. That stopped because it was boring for me (god knows how tedious it was for you) just being A Home Educator or I got fed up writing about frustrations that I had already spent all day being frustrated by, or my kids were getting older and it felt like an infringement of their privacy, or it was just veering into gardening and livestock and food more and more. Dunno. Anyway, I'm older and less trusting now, and I'm not sure I would ever be willing again to lay the deeply personal experiences of raising children out for others to judge. A lot of people have no manners.

So who knows. Maybe it's just the change of seasons and another birthday making me restless, or maybe it's light-headedness from the fact that this week we have each had a plague of such Biblical wrath as to make good atheists want to pray over the lavatory bowl. (At one stage it looked like the dog might outlive us all.)

Maybe it's finally time to start writing fiction?

If you are in Edinburgh right now you need to go and see Frisky and Mannish singing Kate Nash singing Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights (1:20 in).

The Bitter and the Sweet

2011-08-31T07:22:00.001+01:00

This Devil's Coach-horse Beetle - which, when threatened, curls like a scorpion, bites and then emits a noxious fluid - did seem to have been a harbinger of bad luck. We found it on the compost heap which our weekend gardening/ecologist guests were doctoring for us. We had been too scared (of failure, not beetles) to open the bin up but, amazingly, it was full of...compost.

We had also been too scared to post-mortem our no-show asparagus bed. I had a ridiculous notion that it might just spring back to life next year if we ignored it. The husband's eminently capable friend leapt upon it, digging up several crowns and pronouncing them all dead as asparagus crowns that someone neglected to cover in a foot of manure before a snowy winter in east Scotland. I felt much better as soon as I knew what to do to make it right and in March we will start again.

The husband then made a wonderful Greek feast from scratch, which was good since halfway through it I received news that made me want to smash plates. Not anything that belongs in the category of Greek tragedy, thankfully, but a teenager scenario I had always dreaded. And one, like most parenting nightmares I have experienced, which was at least equally an issue of differing parenting as of teenage behaviour.

I spent the next forty-eight hours in bed processing, because that it how I roll. Under the duvet.

There then followed one of the worst conversations of my life (and I'm divorced so I have had some really bad ones...) and now everyone is shell-shocked and licking their wounds and, hopefully, LEARNING SOME LESSONS. Unfortunately the consequences are going to run and run and I am very worried about long-term outcomes. If only parenting were like growing asparagus.

The husband was able to escape to his hive where they harvested sixteen pounds of honey.

Unfortunately not enough to sweeten the bitter taste in my mouth.

Nine

2011-08-26T07:16:00.000+01:00

My baby is nine!

My computer-obsessed boy - whose preferred activities nearly always involve microchips (and food) - chose a birthday at the sand dunes with his brother (and food), his favourite person in the world.

We all - stepdad and grandmother included - took a bus out to Gullane and had a picnic on the beach. There was much rolling and burying.

Then we came home to have toffee/fudge/dulce de leche birthday cake with his dad.

And get a computer.

It was A Good Day.

Salmon and Ink

2011-08-25T07:39:00.001+01:00

It seems I only blog when I have no-one to talk to and since the husband has been off work for a fortnight, I have not been lacking in that department.

This week his uncle and aunt took us for lunch at Hadrian's Brasserie at The Balmoral.

I ate a lot of salmon.

Both were very good but the fennel and cured salmon salad was one of those dishes that I want to live on: fresh, crunchy, raw, citrusy, makes you feel like you could walk the Appalachian Trail before dinner (though possibly that would require several more helpings).

Earlier in the day I went to have my birthday ink finished and I can tell you, it's tricky nailing down that tattoo-parlour-to-Balmoral outfit.

My Garden in Late Summer/Early Autumn 2011

2011-08-20T11:02:00.002+01:00

I am very very pleased with Operation Cover Crop:

crab apple/hedgerow/gooseberry explosion

herb/rhubarb/globe artichoke/pear/currant/strawberry explosion

violas finally dying off; bilberries still failing to make an impact

nigella dying off

raspberries flowering and poppies in the final throes

huge horseradish and Jeruslalem artichokes

last of the cardoons

strawberry/nasturtium explosion

I badly want a Kotlich for here.

Still no pond. Now with more weeds. Oops.

Late Spring/Early Summer
Late Winter/Early Spring

Not Cricket

2011-08-18T17:40:00.007+01:00

Chef is away

So, my husband is away and I am a cricket widow.

I have gone nineties retro. First I watched Sliding Doors on telly, then - for reasons known only to my menstrual cycle - I listened to all of Jagged Little Pill (Alanis, I'm sure the passing years have shown you what we all knew: he just wasn't that into you, love. Of course he's not thinking of you when he effs her, he was thinking of her when he was effing you - chuh!) Then I did something that no other human being has ever done, namely: I edited, organised, backed up on disc and ordered print books of all my digital photos since digital photos were invented. I mean, I didn't wash last night's dishes, but I did the photos, right? Priorities, people.

(It is is this sort of ability to manage time that marks out the mature student. When a new course of study approaches - and particularly, within that course of study, when there is any such thing as a deadline on the table - it is of paramount importance that one deals with ALL the last couple of decades' tasks pending. Even if one has previously luxuriated in being an out and out lifelong slattern, NOW is the time to address those skirting board issues, sew on those buttons and file your husband's 1983 O-level coursework in colour-coded folders under the bed. One must not, under any circumstances, even consider opening a textbook until such pressing tasks are actioned.)

By the way, we watched Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf the other night, with high expectations (which I have long known are the secret of an unhappy life). What a godawful couple of hours that was! It was like the bloody Eastenders omnibus with American accents and bourbon. Please, just get divorced and stop yelling, god.

I was spared Cars 2 due to the lack of 12A certificate enabling my younger child to go unaccompanied except for other littles. I was all set to hang with their home ed parents for the duration but everybody else kind of disappeared. As I texted my beloved: 'I cannot BELIEVE no-one wanted to drink mai tais and make out with me in the bowing alley bar and grill! Don't they know MY HUSBAND IS AWAY??' Harumph. Anyway, it meant I could read my book for two hours. Having finished The Portrait of a Lady (Really, Isabel? Me = Lady Warburton without a second thought, thank you very much.) I am now free to gorge myself on Watching the English.

YOU* must read this book because:
i. if you are English it will make you feel much better about how inept you are.
ii. if you are not English it will make you feel much better about having to deal with English ineptitude.

Also, Magdalena and I agree that EVERY nation requires a guide book like this. I especially want to read 'Watching the Scottish' so I can see which bits of the Venn diagram of Britishness are acceptable to them and which I need to rein in. By myself, it has taken me over a decade to notice that, by and large, Scottish people shake hands more and kiss/hug far far less than I am used to. I'm not sure that I am always typically English though, because instead of embracing my natural awkwardness I have always tended to try and master it by striding right on in with the touching and the - gasps - direct questions. Now though, I am feeling more comfortable with my clumsy birthright - and occasionally kissing people's eyeballs by accident - and I hereby RENOUNCE all imported fancy continental ways and friendly American ease! I love this paragraph:

The Embarrassment Rule
In fact, the only rule one can identify with any certainty in all this confusion over introductions and greetings is that, to be impeccably English, one must perform these rituals badly. One must appear self-conscious, ill-at-ease, stiff, awkward, and, above all else, embarrassed. Smoothness, glibness and confidence are inappropriate and unEnglish. Hesitation, dithering and ineptness are, surprising as it may seem, correct behaviour. Introductions should be performed as hurriedly as possible, but also with maximum inefficiency. If disclosed at all, names must be mumbled; hands should be tentatively half-proffered and then clumsily withdrawn; the approved greeting is someting like 'Er, how, um, plstm-, er, hello?'
If you are socially skilled, or come from a country where these matters are handled in a more reasonable, straightforward manner (such as anywhere else on the planet), you may need a bit of practise to achieve the required degree of embarrassed stilted incompetence.
from Watching the English by Kate Fox

And yet it comes naturally to us!

(Please note that it is only okay for her to say this BECAUSE SHE IS ENGLISH.)

Tonight the teenager (after cooking a delicious dinner - that banana photo is TOTALLY disingenuous of me) and I are watching From Hell. I cannot possibly be disappointed by it since my expectations are so very low. But I have already watched at least three episodes each of Sex & the City and Real Housewives of Orange County and thus now require the presence of testosterone in the living room.

*Kevin, do not buy this book. It is your Christmas present.

I Could Have Ten Sons

2011-08-16T08:02:00.004+01:00

My nephew is staying with us for a couple of days and we all walked down to tell the bees last night. It is lovely having three boys; what is this SMOG nonsense? Who wouldn't want a pack of boy children? I am always pretending other people's kids are mine. My nephew could just about be mine if I had had him at eighteen. I also like when there is some random friend's thirteen and eleven year old around because then I can pretend I had them in the six year age gap between my own kids. (Which, I imagine, might have been sheer hell until they were all aged over four....)

I have been feeling lots of feelings this past week.

Mostly they are:
1. I am not ready for my elder son to go away and leave us all bereft and pathetic anytime soon.
2. I do not want my mum to die. Ever.
3. I want a dad. I was using Leo from The West Wing THEN HE HAD A HEART ATTACK.
4. I wish I had at least one living grandparent.
5. I would like our families and old friends to be nearer.
6. I have always felt a lack of siblings and cousins around my own age.
7. I want to have had more children already - six, let's say - with the youngest being three now.
8. I would like my friends to all live with or opposite me like in gritty American docu-soap Friends.

I am clearly very needy.

Yet, when anyone is actually anywhere near me I suddenly have to go and walk the bed-ridden dog/restart smoking and thus disappear outside for at least seven hours, because I am an only child and a bit claustrophobic around people I haven't i. given birth to ii. been born to or iii. been to bed with (subgroups that I refer to collectively as: The Vagina Connection), but that is NOT THE POINT. It is nice to HAVE THE OPTION of being smothered by family and friends from whom you are then forced to escape, surely?

Either that or I need to accept my semi-self imposed (and largely imagined anyway) isolation and Start Writing. Because it is perfectly okay to be on your own if you are A Writer. You can pretend your books are your babies and make up all sorts of exciting people with whom to be friends.

Unfortunately I have absolutely no imagination and have spent most of the past thirty years writing fascinating insights such as Why I Like Offal and How All My Dogs Have Been Like My Ex-Husbands which makes me less A Writer and more: An Egoist Holding A Pen. (Thank god for the internet though, eh? The natural home of narcissism!)

Whilst it is very nearly my birthday, it is not a landmark one (36) and is not triggering this existential crisis. I do share my birthday with my firstborn though and he will be fifteen which means that next spring he will no longer be home educated and he'll be around less than he has been. Probably still more than most people's much younger school-going children, but we've never done school so not being around my kids all day isn't a concept with which I am familiar. Nor one with which I have ever been familiar given that I had my eldest - you may have noted - on my twenty-first birthday. My only experience of adult life is that of being a parent. I have never had a career or woken up on a Sunday morning, in bed with a lover, and spent all day reading the papers and eating croissants. Well, I have, but there were kids in the bed too and cartoons on and jam smeared everywhere and probably a hamster leaving a trail of effluence. Different.

I have never felt any sense of loss in having my children so young. I always knew that when my peers were spending years fretting over fertility treatment or coming to terms with a sudden and shocking seismic shift to their independent lifestyles, I would be catching up on some of the twenty-something rites of passage I might have missed (you know, like graduating, earning lots of money and going out at night?) But now that those days are on the horizon I don't find myself welcoming them at all. It's not just that the thought of a dissertation, an office job or a nightclub brings me out in a cold sweat - I don't even know how to exist without kids around. I don't know how to structure my day without their needs. It seems so...empty. Or maybe I have become empty in some areas, and what once seemed exciting is now something I have forgotten how to do. In either case I am going to have to reinvent myself because it is likely that there will be some years, if not decades, before I get to grandparent (although I am aware every time I see the teenager's girlfriend that this is not a given, but please let's not go there...) and I am not going to spend them collecting stray dogs.

So it looks like 36 is kind of a landmark after all. Not as much as 37 is going to be, perhaps, with an actual sixteen year old and a little kid into double figures. It's strange how relative age is. Now, I still have a nine year old (well, very nearly nine - our birthdays are all in the same fortnight) and if you have a nine year old and a seven year old then I'm sure you would feel very much like you are right there in the land of the little kids. But I have a nine year old and a fifteen year old and I have been in the land of the teenagers for years. I tend to see the nine year old as less of a little kid and more of a junior teen marching right down that road to independence. Partly that is because kids with older siblings often aspire to maturity and sophistication much earlier, partly it is because I AM LETTING HIS PRECIOUS LITTLE KID YEARS RUN AWAY!

I realise I need to stop worrying about what I'm going to do in the next stage of my life and concentrate on this one. I don't want the rest of my thirties to fly by, not because they are my thirties - I couldn't care less about that - but because when I turn forty my youngest child will have become a teenager too. I'm not ready! I only have to remember his chubby toddler feet sticking out of hand-me-down striped pyjamas and I start sniffling. Nobody warned me! Actually, that's not true, everyone warned me: THEY GROW UP SO FAST, they all said when they leaned over him tied onto me in the sling. When I think back to having a newborn baby and how insanely full-on it is? It lasts for WEEKS. Not even months, never years - WEEKS! Then it's over. How can my baby be 6'2 and wear a size 12 shoe? Even the ACTUAL baby - whom we still all call The Baby - wears a size 8 shoe, bigger than mine! There was this wonderful golden period where I realised they were becoming bigger than me, becoming men, and it was the most exciting amazing thing in the world. Now I am fully comprehending that its logical conclusion is with them leaving me and whilst I have always known that rationally, I hadn't expected to feel it viscerally, as such a surprise.

MOJITO CHEESECAKE RECIPE - I HAZ IT

2011-08-11T15:25:00.005+01:00

Whatever Mr Salmond may be suggesting, we didn't have riots in Scotland because it has been raining torrentially for the past seventeen years and the youth are too cold and defeated. Everything is too sodden for arson and if you went out looting, your window-display fresh trainers would be soggy and your wide screen telly soaked before you got back.

This is why we stay home and fry stuff instead. Exhibit A: paella.

Here we have an example of poor home economics in that I purchased a relatively expensive locally made 'chorizo' (I was trying to think of a witty Scots' name for it at the producers' stall but failed miserably) justifying that it would eke out a cheap pasta-y type meal. Then I bought chicken breasts, prawns and mussels (admittedly all from the reduced shelf) to go with it. The paella was very very good though. There was a lot of sherry in it because my husband is of an age where sherry is the answer to almost everything.

The teenager was upstairs looking through Spooning With Rosie for more stuff to fry when he called down, 'Mum, you are NOT going to like this...' for what had he found in said cookery book but a recipe for MOJITO CHESECAKE. Close readers will recognise this as a dish I INVENTED! (Close friends will have eaten it.) WTF?? I invented Mojito Cheesecake in 2006 when Suz returned from cycling around Cuba. She has always loved my husband's unbaked cheesecake (that is not a euphemism, we're from Surrey) which he was taught to make by his French teacher whose house he visited for afternoon tea (don't ask. Public school, innit?) He always uses lemon whilst I am a devotee of the lime and begged him to substitute. It was then that I conceived the brilliance of also adding a fresh mint chiffonade and a rum syrup poured over the top and calling it Mojito Cheesecake for Suz's Welcome Home from Cuba dinner.

The lovely Rosie Lovell's recipe (or rather than of the mysterious 'Dr Helen') lacks rum but does have the same ginger biscuit base as mine, which is odd because ginger isn't an ingredient in mojitos but we have both opted for it. I was whining about this over dinner when my children sagely noted that someone else discovered evolution at the same time as Darwin and I was forced to concede that the Mojito Cheesecake is clearly just common sense. I cannot claim to have invented it anymore than I could have patented the piece of advice her mum gives on the flapjack recipe - that failed flapjacks make excellent granola. (Making some of them/that later too.) However, the Whisky Mac Trifle™ and Ben Nevis™ puddings ARE MINE!

I hope Rosie's Deli in Brixton has weathered the riots. What madly emotional scenes everywhere. I am a self-confessed sap and the sight of all those people with brooms made me quite tearful. The husband is returning to his former south London stomping ground next week - hopefully everything will be operating normally there by then. The teenager's dad lives in Birmingham (and yet, the teenager is not a lawless feral sociopath. Daily Mail, take note: IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT THE WEDDING RINGS) and has reported much carnage.

Here we just have flooding.

George Street

2011-08-09T08:11:00.003+01:00

There is no rioting in Edinburgh, just a lot of improv and intepretive dance.

Last night I went out with two lovely ladies I have known on the internet for probably nearly a decade, but never met before.

We went to Cafe Andaluz which I would totally recommend.

I disgraced myself by having carpaccio, black pudding AND braised pig cheek (which was INCREDIBLE) while the others ordered veggie.

but I don't drink raspberry caipirinhas so I have to do something bad.

On the subject of meeting up with lovely ladies on George Street, I forgot to record that last month I went to Browns - ostensibly for cocktails, cakes and [baked] camembert but I don't do drink or dairy so I had fresh mint tea and a virgin mojito instead. I recorded the food for you though, peckish reader:

It's lovely in there but they could really do with some pork on their afternoon tea menu.

Must go back to compulsively watching riot coverage.

Organic Community Goodness

2011-08-07T18:23:00.007+01:00

Yesterday was very nearly a hat trick of organic community goodness.

First we went to the local little organic market where I purchased lemon verbena and yet more lavender from the wonderful Plants With Purpose as well as some very good Scottish 'chorizo' and a round lemon cucumber from various producers, plus beetroot dip and delicious raw macaroons from the most aesthetically pleasing Ziggy's Really Good Food stall. I stopped by the library to borrow that copy of Spooning with Rosie for the teenager to read. It has a wonderful recipe for dairy-free coconut and cardamon custard that I am hoping someone will make for me.

After that I accompanied the husband to check the bees at the community orchard. I have had a complete honey epiphany since the beekeeping began. Maple syrup has always been my sweetener of choice but maples aren't grown here and the bees have won me over entirely.

In the afternoon, after a lunch of fried chicken livers and slices of lemon cucumber spread with beetroot dip, we were supposed to visit an open organic garden day but the rain was far too heavy to contemplate venturing out with my current lurgy.

In between downpours we did manage to assemble the new (to us) coop, decontaminate the foul-smelling wheelie bin, transplant a lavender bush and prune the cherry and plum. I was mortified to see the plum had two huge scars on the trunk where the soft pipe cleaner ties I used used last year to fan it, had cut right in. I am so fastidious about checking that my saplings are properly earthed in, still require their stakes and are not too tightly tied to them or being chafed, but I completely missed this. Gah. Unlike the cherry, the plum does not seem to want to be fanned either. The fanned branches have grown a few inches whereas it has thrown up whole feet of new ones skywards. Perhaps too shady down low? I am sorry, plum.

Saturday night I made the kids watch Super Size Me on telly. Our family is an ongoing study of hedonistic food fetishism vs wanting to look hot and not die young. We watched Sherlock Holmes the other day, which I did not love, then the husband and I started watching Sherlock, which I did. (On the subject of being Behind, my mother is ecstatic today that Downton Abbey has finally come to Scottish TV....) Lately we've also seen The Young Victoria and Mrs Brown and preferred the former. Next: in our vaguely Victorian-related season: Gulliver's Travels and Tess of the D'Urbervilles though I haven't a clue which adaption. (Outwith the vaguely Victorian-related season: we are still ploughing through The Tudors - Jane's just died of childbed fever - and The West Wing - Leo's just had a heart attack; the husband couldn't make it halfway through Black Swan and I lost two years of my life I'll never get back - not to mention twenty quid - being assaulted by Horrid Henry. Although I will say that the kid playing Henry had the most beautiful face which is always fortunate for a child exhibiting vile behaviour. Also see: my youngest.)

Still reading and liking The Portrait of a Lady and also Kate Fox's Watching the English, a present from Magdalena, which I am rationing out in tiny chunks because it is So Brilliant.

More reading, watching, cooking and raining today. The husband made his legendary pork chop chilli and baked Liberty London Girl's peach and almond cake because her dense nut flour and fresh fruit cakes always look amazing.

To Do

2011-08-05T14:22:00.004+01:00

Despite how it may appear from reading my blog, it doesn't feel like there has been much stopping to smell the flowers this summer.

There is always plenty of eating but outside mealtimes there seem to be endless jobs to do. A lot of maths and shit-picking but also a constant long list of other animal husbandry, garden and diy tasks.

I have completely ignored the pond digging - largely because I have to bury the dog under it first and the dog is still alive.

But I have made an unplanned start on the front which has involved a lot of uprooting pampas and planting lavenders, mints and lemon-scented herbs. I have even done something that seems very grown up: I have bought a rose. My dad had a much admired rose garden and although I like them as cut flowers I've never considered growing them. But the more rosewater, dried rose petals and rose-scented creams I bought, the more it seemed like something to consider. There are already a few old roses here, none that I'm mad about being as they are yellow or orange-toned reds (gauche!), and now I am adding one of my own, between the heathers, in a colour my mother refers to as 'heart attack lips'. It's called Twice in a Blue Moon (more disease resistant than Blue Moon apparently) and I love it. It is one of several birthday presents I am awarding myself.

My chard is beautiful too. I received five Lilywhite sea kale plants in the post this week. I had a couple of my own seedlings left but mainly they were eaten by slugs when I uncloched them too soon, so I had to buy in. It's odd that only a couple of the two dozen salsify I sowed germinated this year. Perhaps the new bed was too shady. I intend to try again in spring, maybe with new seed and soaking it first. My replacement globe artichokes seem to be doing okay. I don't know what went wrong with the asparagus this year. First year (the crowns' second) almost every crown put up a shoot and we left them. This year we had three. The prime suspect is cats using the bed as a thoroughfare, for which I will require a fence.

I have managed to raise three of these perennial Nine Star broccoli plants from seed, although caterpillars are shredding them as we speak. (The chickens won't eat the caterpillars, they are far too busy giving each other leg ups to reach the few remaining blueberries....)

Now that the chickens free range all day, they don't need sixty square feet of indoor accomodation between the two of them. So as another birthday present, I have just bought a nearly new chicken coop - one that has been excellently reinforced against foxes by the previous owner - and which will be big enough for four bantams so I can try to get them to hatch out a couple more next year. I am jet cleaning, disinfectanting, lice spraying and diatomaceous-earth-dusting the coop today, then Dora and Pol can move in and the big shed will be empty for the ferrets again, thus leaving their sun room available as a people space. And thus generating the need for more decorating, repairs, diy etc. It is endless. But good.

Red Cells

2011-08-02T16:59:00.009+01:00

Ah, so low mood explained by sudden eruption of violent cold/throat infection/fever-type-thing on Monday.

I have a strong compulsion to eat red foods.

Kilo of strawberries for breakfast (I have waited all summer for strawberries to fall in price and only just realised that it's not going to happen. When did strawberries join raspberries, cherries and blueberries on the platinum-studded soft fruits list? Next year I will be less laissez-faire about the chickens eating my entire crop. Especially since they have now moved on to the blueberries. I may have to net the cherry tree from bullfinches too. A decade ago cherries were bought by the bag, now they are sold in those tiny one-layer punnets at £2 for barely a dozen fruits. £7 a kilo is the absolute cheapest I have seen them anywhere this year and they were on their last legs [stalks?] and gone the next day. Whatever is the world coming to etc.)

Tomato salad and tomato soup for lunch

Then I had a Nakd bar and four squares of Lindt 90% just to be sure.

I have spent the past two days online looking for new healthy recipes after the revelation that is Marks and Spencers Butternut and Chilli Harissa dip. It is vegan (no wheezing!) and does not contain gallons of oil. I love. However, I am not in the market for M&S deli items so I need to learn to make it myself (see: M&S Chargrilled Calamari Rings with Red Pepper and Chilli Dressing). I've also been looking for some new sauces that are lighter on oil and don't contain dairy, which led me to contemplate a raw food cook book. Years ago I used to eat high-raw diet but was never interested in dehydrators or spending huge amounts on powder in jars, which is the antithesis of what I am attracted to about really fresh food. Plus I think [appropriate] raw eggs, meat and fish are delicious and nutritious but raw food is nearly always presented as vegan. I was a vegan for a long time but these days I don't like to adopt labels or follow strict dietary rules...they always seem a few short steps away from disordered eating for people like me who have a tendency towards the obsessive.

I did learn though, that the way I like to eat the majority of the time has a label already - paleo! It's funny because I was talking to a friend the other day about the blood type diet which was the latest thing a few years ago and which she has been looking into for health reasons. I told her how back when I worked in the charity shop, I had picked up a copy, read the blurb about hunter-gatherer diets vs agrarian diets and thought, 'Woah! This is excellent! There is a theory behind why I feel better eating meat and veg and not dairy and starches!' only then I read it and realised that for my blood type - A - I am apparently supposed to eat the agrarian vegetarian grain-cultivators' diet. Pah!

Boats, Bees, Barbecues, Blues

2011-08-01T09:26:00.003+01:00

Saturday morning we went down to my mum's to painstakingly carry her shed, piece by piece, back to our house so we could painstakingly bastardise it into a chicken coop. Yeah, that didn't happen. We looked at all the big heavy bits of wood with the nails sticking out and went to watch the Portobello Regatta and eat Findlay's bratwurst instead. We don't like pain.

Then we walked down to the community orchard to meet the husband's bee group and inspect their hive.

I did not do any inspecting because I do not have a bee suit or know anything about bees. I am IC poultry. He does bees.

They looked like they were attending a nuclear incident.

Dr & Mrs Suz and the bump joined me on a bench in the extrordinarily bright sun and afterwards we all went back to ours for an impromptu barbecue of spatchcock chicken, chorizo and pork sausages, kebabs and the usual accompaniments.

It is a shame that on the most idyllic day of the year I was somewhat struck by melancholy. This may be due to my poor blood sugar after eating 47 chocolate marshamallow Rice Krispie treats for breakfast, lunch and dinner over the previous 24 hours or possibly just because I am a mentalist.

In any case, I went to bed - as soon as our guests had gone - with Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady then left at 7am the next morning to walk ten miles of the John Muir Way (plus another few miles to the starting point). Then I ate a pasty the size of my head and had a nap. Then I felt better.

In the evening we watched 127 Hours which - urgh, god - NO, is all I have to say. We don't like pain.

Museum

2011-08-01T08:52:00.000+01:00

The entire world is about to arrive in Edinburgh again. It is nice but soon becomes wearing, however it probably pays for our cobbled streets or something so one shouldn't whinge.

I am curmudgeonly because I overdosed on crowds at the long-anticipated reopening of the museum last week.

I love natural history museums, they are one of my favourite places on Earth. London's is my best but the new natural history galleries of the Museum of Scotland looked good from what little I could see whilst I tried to avoid being mowed down by pushchairs.

I couldn't really take photos because I had to concentrate on not losing the little kid who, despite the incredible volume of his voice and giantness of his limbs, still sometimes disappears from my sight in pursuit of some buttons to press.

I liked these fighting peacocks very much.

It was lovely to be back in the building my kids passed their infancy in.

Girls

2011-07-28T07:49:00.006+01:00

Bbq leftovers salad

The teenager's girlfriend is staying this week and yesterday they had some friends round for a barbecue. He has a big group of 'lads' but yesterday seven girls walked through the door and not one boy. There was a lot of giggling and shrieking. The teenager grilled sausages, marinated chicken pieces, and made kebabs and burgers to go with the neighbour's home-grown patty pan squash, corn, potato salad and slaw with bantam egg mayonnaise. He knows how to impress the ladies.

ANOTHER hot sunny day today and I took the little kid to a friend's paddling pool before they all went on to play laser tag. The husband and I looked after their youngest - an absolutely gorgeous four year old. I can be shy with little girls if they are shy too - I am more used to the rambunctious ways of boisterous boys - but she was just adorable and I carried her around like a little monkey and was most reluctant to return her to her mother.

The kitten is a horrible murderer. Getting a mouse a day was great but he brought in two fledglings yesterday, one a thrush which I hope might survive. I was horrified and put a second bigger bell on his EIGHTH new collar. He is never allowed out at night, dawn or dusk and is always brought inside for a short period of retributive justice after making a kill, but he remains a consumate hunter. I adore him but I have learnt that kittens fathered by wily outdoor toms are natural born killers.

AND the other morning I woke up to find mouse poo ON MY PILLOW.

SEVEN PREDATORS I own. All of them living indoors. Mouse poo. ON MY PILLOW. To be fair, the kitten is shut in the little kid's bedroom at night, where he sleeps soundly all night long and doesn't disturb us by 'playing' with the actual cat/standing on our heads etc. The actual cat sleeps in our room and is so NOT a hunter that he is content to let vermin run over us as we sleep. I adore him but I have learnt that obese lazy cats will not provide pest control.

My set texts have arrived and I am going to have to find sixteen hours a week to study again. If you have ever studied with the OU you will know this usually means studying sixteen minutes a week apart from the weeks you have a TMA due and then staying up three nights straight to meet the deadline.

Right now though I have to prepare for the teenager's next English and Maths assignments. In ten months he will have graduated home education after more than a decade! My life's work!

Amy, Amy Amy

2011-07-25T08:01:00.000+01:00

Two sunny days in a row, even though the news has been black.

The teenage butterflied a leg of lamb and barbecued it with sausages.

We had it with beetroot coleslaw, globe artichokes from the garden

corn, roast pepper salad,

home-grown chard and spinach with mayonnaise from the bantams

who finished off any leftovers on the corn cobs.

Trossachs

2011-07-24T16:47:00.000+01:00

We have totally got our Trossachs Tour off pat now, having taken both my mum and sister, so this weekend we took my mum's friend who is up from London:

- Drive the hour and a half to Loch Katrine and buy tickets for the SS Walter Scott; wait in the cafe* for the next sailing

- Sit on the front deck, braving the loch winds, and only have a hot chocolate with brandy if really necessary

- continue to David Marshall Lodge and walk through the pines

to the waterfall

noting heather

and blaeberries**

- Find the hide and wait for a red squirrel

and any other fauna

- Return home via Callander and buy caramel shortbread ice-cream/tablet/whisky etc.

*(the husband and I proclaimed this: margarine cake and that is Not A Good Thing)

**Dear Blaeberries in my garden,

See those blue things?

THOSE ARE FRUIT.

Love,

Optimus Prime

2011-07-22T07:45:00.004+01:00

I suspect it is inappropriate to have a crush on a Transformer, isn't it? But probably less inappropriate than having a crush on a talking lion/polar bear? Although really they are all completely HUMANISED so everything is actually ENTIRELY NORMAL with me, thank you very much. Where were we? Ah yes: Transformers was great! Which is a sentence I never thought I would write. I mean, obviously, great in context; there were gaping plot holes (what was the point of his parents in their RV? Maybe I was in the Ladies?) plus I haven't seen either of the other films and was somewhat disappointed that there was no Megan Fox - who my teenage son assures me is most definetly a fox - because I found it hard to look at anything other that that English girl's upper lip (that and the fact her shoes kept changing from ballet flats to Louboutin heels and back again in the same scene). But all that aside, given that I entered as a lone adult with six boys and disheartened at the two hours forty minutes ahead of me, I was delighted with my visceral response to cars changing into robots and beating each other up. More of that! Maybe I have been living in a house full of menfolk for too long?

Let's have some flowers to balance it out, shall we?

Nigella

Poppies, strangling my raspberries

Cardoon, and behind you can just see The Forest of Nasturtiums in The Pudding Garden

By the fire pit the Californian poppies are disappearing as I forget to deadhead them; in The Pudding Garden the cherries are all gone but the plums are ripening.

Just need a tiramisu tree now.

Look how mad the ebay strawberries runners are! Because I am growing them as a cover crop rather than for peak production, I have left them to reproduce insanely.

This is The Nasturtium Forest I grew round the little kid's den. He loves eating nasturtiums and grossing out his friends. It's a boy thing.