Summer Holiday Flowers

I missed the blog last week as I was away – so apologies.

The school holidays are finally here!  Why should I care, I have no kids of my own!

Well there are generally three tell-tale signs in my view;

• The rains come most days
• It is no longer light and sunny so early in the morning and the nights draw in – heading towards end of summer (and dare I say it, autumn)
• The traffic on the roads vanishes

I always feel sorry for the kids, they spend weeks cooped up in school waiting for the holidays and then the minute they get some time off the weather turns foul. But these days I am not sure they care that much as it gives them a great excuse to spend hours on the computer / tablet / phone without interruptions.

But then I remember that they have 6 weeks of holiday, so my feeling of sympathy vanishes and the evil feeling that is envy replaces it. Oh, to have 6 weeks off again – with no responsibilities or worries.  What could you do with that! But then you would have no money and would not be allowed to decide anything for yourself beyond which app to play with, so it is not all sweetness and roses.

Beautiful Holiday Fare

My journey to work has now become almost enjoyable.

I say “almost” because it still takes me 2.5 hours to get to work.

It usually takes me 3 – 3.5 hours each way in the winter, with a good amount of time crawling along at 5 miles per hour. The radio keeps me company and entertains my mind, but the early starts and the constant stop start take their toll.

But for now, a relatively clear road and a journey in the daylight, (well for most of it), make the task much more pleasant.

But behind this enjoyment lies another devil. A new type of speed camera. Gone are the days of making up time on a clear road, because they now have permanent digital speed cameras on the motorways, and they are switched on.

On the grey frames that hover over the motorway are platforms hidden to the left that have a couple of yellow cameras. These are there to enforce the variable speed limits, but they are left on when the signs go off too.

I know this because I received a polite letter from our local money making enterprise that is the speed enforcement force. Please send us £2,500 and receive 6 points. My heart stopped for a brief second. "Did I read that correctly?"

Well that is the fine should I ignore the letter – I don’t remember it being that big in the past. This time a speed awareness course has been possible to remind me that I can actually travel at 70 mph on the dual carriageways as long as there is a barrier down the middle. But next time it is points and fines. Beware!

https://www.speedcamerasuk.com/hadecs-3.htm

Heart of The Garden

The rain has been great for the garden, except for those things growing in the green house. We now have more beans of all kinds than we can eat. Broad beans, runner beans and dwarf beans. But the moisture in the air also kicks off another growth spurt of weeds. Suddenly, our vegetable plot has gained some very large additions with pretty looking pink throngs. Thankfully these pull out relatively easily as the ground is now soft again. But they do their best to crowd out the vegetables we do want.

I also have some red cabbages ripening. These have proper hearts and everything!

There is nothing better than curried red cabbage with a pork chop. Slow cooked with an apple or two, or some fresh onion. The apples are not yet ready, but some of the onions certainly are. It is interesting to look at the garden and recognise what grows and ripens together, and see how that influences our recipes.  In our world of convenience, with everything available year-round, it is sometimes easy to forget that things actually have a season and a time when they are at their best. In our garden that time is now for most vegetables, and in a month or two for most of the fruit.

However, I do have to give a shout out to my mother’s plums. It’s not every day you talk about your mother’s plums!

But they are magnificent at the moment. If you could bottle a point in time in a garden this would certainly be the right time for her. My better half made a superb plum crumble and I have been eating them raw for breakfast. What a treat!

Monsters At Large

As much as I am fond of our cats and they add variety into my daily life, I am starting to get rather tired of their routine. Gone are the days where I used to get a full night’s sleep. I feel like I have a new baby in the house and yet have not enjoyed the luxury of conceiving it.

Our two boys have slipped into a pretty consistent routine that is actually now quite hard to break. Each evening they come in as the darkness arrives and run around as if they still have loads of energy to offload. As we go to bed, they decide that it is good to have company and crowd the room in one form or another. Either climbing on the bed before we have a chance to get in or running around the room jumping from furniture top to furniture top.

“Just shut them out”, I hear you say. They have both now discovered their voices and their ability to jump up the door. This can continue for hours if you don’t open it. So it is a balancing act between disruption in the room or noise outside it.

On a Friday, almost like clockwork, they usually provide us with a present to start the weekend. A live vole to catch, a baby rabbit to clear up or something more exotic like a weasel.

If I am working from home then they usually find something to “gift” me, or they provide a brief demonstration of how to eat a whole furry animal, as if I am somehow slightly useless by not doing so.

Better Than A Dead Mouse - The First Figs of The Year!

Last Friday I arrived home late from work as usual and walked into the house. “I think we have a vole or mouse hiding in the bedroom”, my better half remarked.

I crept in with my suit on and changed into something less formal – eyes peeled looking for this furry customer. No sign.

Ignoring this for a moment, we spent the next couple of hours eating our dinner. It is amazing how I have become accustomed to visitors in the house.

After dinner and having consumed a glass or three of our finest red, I took on the vole challenge. “It is under the bed”, I thought. Images of a small rodent climbing on me in the night came to mind. A feeling of terror gripped me enough to galvanise me into deconstructing the bedroom.

I pulled out the bed from the wall. “What is that”, I thought looking at a considerable sprinkling of rodent droppings. “Yuck, something has been living here”. I pulled the bed out further and a dead mouse dropped out. The images of the rodent climbing on me flooded back.

“That is an old mouse”, my wife said, the vole I saw earlier must still be there. “How could I be sleeping in here for days with a mouse hiding in the bed and not know?”, I asked myself.

I started to dismantle the divan bed, pulling out the drawers, fearful that the rodent would run out at any moment. No sign.

I piled up the mattress, the drawers, sheets and pillows and now looked at the bed base. Still no sign of anything.

I lifted up the whole bed base so that my wife could look. After a minute or so she exclaimed, “There it is – hiding in the base”. The vole was trying to look invisible and crouching in a nook. My wife went for the trusty pint glass and within moments had caught the intruder. We opened the French doors and left him go. He raced away across the garden from whence he came.

I looked at the debris that was our bedroom and slowly put it all back together. “Why have the cats chosen this room as their new presentation parlour”, I thought. We have created a monster which just keeps giving.

A New Visitor

On Monday I had a fairly unhappy call home in the evening. I was staying away and the cats had decided that they would bring in a baby bird. This time a thrush. We don’t see many baby thrushes, so my better half moved pretty sharply to save it.

The trouble was, that once she did this, she realised that this baby could not yet fly or live by itself. But it was still alive and kicking.

Unsure what to do, she put it in a box, fed it a few worms by hand, and then went to bed expecting it to be dead in the morning.

The next morning, she got up and went to see how it was. Opening the box, she found a pair of eyes looking up at her in expectant fashion. She fed it another worm and then took it outside. “Where do I put it?”, she thought. She let it go by the compost heap and the little thing ran away and hid. A parent came down to find it and she left them alone to make up. It has not been seen again, let’s hope it is ok.

A "Loaf" of Bread

This week has been so incident packed that I will save some further stories for next week. I also have a new tool in my armoury which I want to describe.

I did make some bread this week using the trusty bread maker - but the outcome was not as expected (see the photo opposite). I don't know what went wrong but 500g of flour and ingredients created a flat, squidgy pile of flour and mush!

Whilst driving home from work I heard someone on the radio that I had not heard from for years – Gary Numan. He is much older and wiser and now has a family. This has influenced him and his thinking and he is now an environmental campaigner, amongst other things.

But he described becoming famous at 21 with the song below – which sold a million plus records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0WNbm1jz6A

Ten years later he made a record that sold three thousand copies and he had to stand outside his concert venue and give tickets away to people who didn’t want them. How the mighty fall!

Here is his other really famous song. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ldyx3KHOFXw

Have a great weekend!

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