Thursday 24th August - Falling in Love Again

 Yes, it's true... we are in love (I don't mean with each other, no, that hasn't come out right. We've been married for nearly 46 years and we are most definitely still in love...)

but a new love has come into our lives.

It is a bright red Fiat 500x petrol hybrid It is smooth, polite, deferential, willing, cooperative and incredibly well behaved. We have owned it for only ten hours, and our minds are made up.

It is also an automatic; I've never driven one before. I was seriously concerned as to how I would cope. I was also very apprehensive because since Lockdown in 2020 my driving journeys, mostly to visit friends locally, could be counted on my fingers, not including thumbs, so I am seriously out of practice.

Himself drove it the twenty miles from the dealers mostly in a silence of deep concentration but occasionally saying 'oh joy' or 'that was so much easier' every mile or so.

I have driven it round our local residential roads with some success so far, in that I didn't have any scrapes, bumps or near misses. Himself sat as copilot offering encouragement as necessary. I mostly concentrated on Turning Left, but have tried Turning Right and Reversing Out Of A Cul-de-Sac. It took a couple of circuits, but I am beginning to get the sequence of 'Mirror Signal Manoeuvre' in the right order, and to be able to interpret what I see in the mirrors rather than alternately staring straight ahead or looking wildly round in all directions without registering what I see. What impressed me most is that I only tried to use the clutch pedal once! ("Tuck your LEFT foot as far back and out of the way as you can").

If I can add half an hour's driving every day in ever increasing circles, and start introducing Traffic Lights and then Roundabouts I am hopeful that I'll get back into the swing of things. After all, in my previous existence before Covid I used to travel anything up to 100 miles a day from one end of the County to another between schools, filling in the time between driving with teaching samba drumming, djembe drumming, trumpet, clarinet, flute, recorder, ukulele, guitar and sometimes piano, cello or viola!

Luckily I did not teach ALL these instruments in the same day, just half a dozen on a busier day. Loading the car used to be a mix of memory test and puzzle solving. Do I miss those days? On the whole, no. The music, the fun, the companionship, the buzz, yes. The exhausting classroom management of difficult classes, and lugging instruments and resources in and out of schools, no.

........

We didn't go out slugging last night. This morning I discovered one of my pak choi had been et. I have sprinkled coffee grounds around then next, and somehow I need to summon the energy to go slugging tonight. Ang asked what I did with the slugs and snails. I drop them into the council garden waste bin, whereupon they spend their days trying to climb up and out. The slugs sometimes manage to ooooooze their way to freedom. 

..........

Somehow half an hour's cross stitch got done this evening. Not the best time for me, but there wasn't that much left in this particular section and and just about managed to finish it without too much unpicking. I absolutely LOVE my Sarah Homfray variegated threads. You can feel the quality as you sew. The colours are beautiful with so many shades in each skein. Worth the money.

   

Wednesday 25th March - Yesterday - the greenhouse

We seem to be moving into a rhythm...

I have a long lazy morning in bed, surrounded by books, drawing materials, browsing twitter, facebook, kindle, bbc news and various blogs on my tablet, while Himself is busy, doing - I don't know, really... I hear the washing machine going, and the dishwasher, sometimes the bread machine bleeps, sometimes there is silence...

Yesterday he took the car to the garage for its MOT, luckily not due until towards the end of next month. Halfway there he had a phone call (handless, or whatever it is called, hands-free, that's it) to say the garage was closing. So he turned round and came home.

That was good news for me; friends have passed on a small plastic 'greenhouse' which their daughter had when she was in student digs. And here it is, apart from two metal grills which are not in shot.

You might notice that there are no instructions... This always reminds me of the time when I was chuffed to bits to have found an affordable but reasonably demanding electronic chess set to give him one Christmas nearly forty years ago. That didn't have its instructions either... he was kind enough to say that fathoming out how to work it was as much of a delight as eventually being able to play chess. So I was pleased to be able to give him another challenge today.

I left him to the task and went to make soup;

After a while the components had moved, and been combined.

I went off and finished the soup, portioning it into pots for the freezer. (Sweat chopped onion, sliced up tired celery, diced elderly carrots in a mix of butter and chilli oil, with garlic and bay leaves Add enough water to cover and leave on low heat until carrots soft. Process and leave very thick - takes less room in the freezer and stock can always be added later.)

(Chilli oil - put a couple of dried chillis in a bottle with decent olive oil and leave for a couple of weeks. It's potent stuff, don't use too much!)

We have several dozen of this little one-portion pots left over from when I used to take vegetable puree, apple sauce, and rice pudding to my godmother every time we visited. I label things for the freezer by writing date/contents etc on a piece of masking tape and sticking it on the lid.

By the end of the day it looked like this - the greenhouse, not the soup;

This picture was taken around 4pm - it will be in full sun soon. There are pots sown with lettuce seeds in there, but all my seeds are pretty ancient (sow before 2017, that sort of thing). We shall see, or not see, in due course.

This is the first of the mystery knit-a-long patterns I'm attempting from the Arne and Carlos blog. I was quite pleased with it; I'd be happier if I had read the instructions properly before I started. It is supposed to be 13 cm by 14 cm. I've managed to persuade it to reshape from 11 cm by 16 cm to nearly 13 cm by a bit bigger than 14 cm. I was going to redo with  better attempt at following the instructions, but then I discovered there are FIVE patterns to knit every week! It's a fiddly business - their patterns only use two colours, and so does mine, but I deliberately bought yarn that changes colour all the time - mustakes ar so much les eesi two spotte.

I've started playing the piano for pleasure again. The daily work of teaching, and also the worries about my godmother over the last year had made me so tired at the end of the day that I had no brain-space for playing the piano. But what to play? Nothing too difficult, nothing too emotional, nothing too easy, nothing too cerebral?

In the end I've chosen a straightforward waltz, Dvorak of 54 number 1, the first on this youtube. The other waltzes are a bit hectic for me at the moment!

I'm also considering Les Anes by Grovlez  which a friend of mine at school used to play - I bought the music but had never properly learned it myself.

Oh well. Today was good. And tomorrow will be as well. All will be well, and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.

Sunday 26th - and breathe...

We're sitting down, each with a coffee to hand. The cats have stopped paddling around and chosen their preferred resting places.

No television, no sound except the rattle of the computer keys and the ticking of the clock. The garden is watering itself from time to time (ie it is drizzling outside).

We've come back from visiting my Godmother; she is getting stir crazy. They let her have a zimmer frame for a toilet trip and she was off like a ferret down a rabbit hole, the nurse having to move smartly to keep up. 'Oh my, we aren't used to them going that fast,' cried the nurse as she set off in pursuit. She still tires quickly; it's going to be a while yet before she gets her discharge papers and goes home.

Anyway, here are some random thoughts


Inside this unlikely-looking package  are four Jacob's crackers, four squares of cheddar, a dollop of Branston pickle and a small plastic spreader. When you have spent a day in and out of a hospital visiting an elderly relative, have had too many lukewarm mediocre coffees and are facing a 90 minute drive home, one of these packets shared between us is a surprisingly excellent thing.

As are these Itsu chocolate rice cakes, shared between us as we drive home, or these mini pretzels

                

In future we are going to keep small containers of pretzels and similar delicacies in the car. Not the cheese thingies though. I don't think they have that kind of shelf life, and spreading Branston pickle onto crackers and handing them to the driver is probably A Bad Idea.

We have found a Waitrose halfway along one of the routes home, relatively easy to get to with a reasonable car park (especially with the Panda which turns on a sixpence and slips into awkward spaces with ease). As well as selling food, it has Important facilities like loos, and a cafe which sells macaroni cheese with cauliflower and bacon - the ultimate comfort food.

Food and evening meals have been a bit of an issue recently. We are getting more canny, buying things that can go into the freezer if we don't eat them in time, and can also be cooked from frozen.

Random Fact
We've been keeping a record of the differences in the cost of running the Alfas and the Panda. The savings we have made are on track for the Panda to have paid for itself by the end of June.

The accounting is a little tricksy to substantiate; one of the reasons we will reach break even so soon (we had figured on it being October) is because of the savings we make in the difference in cost each time we fill the car with petrol. Because the number of long distance trips we have been doing, we are obviously filling the tank more often, and therefore saving money more frequently... I did wonder if we should buy another Panda in order to make even more savings, but I am assured that that's not quite how it works.

Friday Saturday 8th February - English Winter

And English winter really just means rain, here in the South. If I were an Eeyore, I would say it was just like the English Spring, and Summer, and Autumn too. But I'm not. (And yes, I am thinking it, even if I am saying it.)

Here's what outside looks like

The only saving grace is that wonderful, wonderful amaryllis. Both flower spikes are fully open now.

The best Eeyore is Geoffrey Palmer. With Judi Dench as the Narrator and Kanga. Here they are, on youtube. These stories, with this cast, are on my mp3 player for when I am not sleeping in the middle of the night. Although I am listening to Ngaio Marsh 'Death in Ecstasy' which is one of the very silliest of all of her 'Inspector Alleyn' stories. It is taking me a long time, as I fall asleep after a couple of tracks and wake up several hours later to silence. Then, the next evening, I find the last bit that I can remember and listen to the next ten minutes.

The cats are learning to share the settee. It has to be done carefully, making sure each cat knows that the other one is there. and No Sudden Movements allowed by anyone. Leo likes to be wrapped up, and McCavity likes to be on top of the pile of blanket.

It's not an entirely satisfactory result because now I have nowhere to sit. So I am blogging instead, and listening to the story 'In which Eeyore has a birthday and gets two presents'.

This morning, He took the Panda to the vet tyre depot, as the front right tyre is leaking air. This was problematic, as I needed to go to a village school to demonstrate what a fun instrument the descant recorder is, to recruit some more pupils. Luckily a friend was willing to provide a taxi service, and lurk in the school car park while I went from class to class, and bring me home. I need to recruit at least two, and preferably about six children to make up my hours.

The tyre depot were very inconclusive, their unconsidered  advice being that we should take to Panda to their contacts in the next town and have the alloy rims refurbished. We'll get a second opinion before we go down that route, and meanwhile just keep on pumping up the tyre.

I'm testing the recipe for Slovenian honey biscuits for the Women's World Day of Prayer coffee morning at the end of the month.

 So far, so good, apart from forgetting to glaze the second batch with beaten white of egg. I'm too impatient to roll the dough out and play with cookie cutters, so I just formed the dough into a long sausage and cut off slices. The final result is supposed to look like this;

The line missing off the bottom is 'bake for 10-15 minutes, leave to cool on the tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack'. Then you ice them - I'm wondering if that would be a fun interactive activity for the people attending the coffee morning? No, I thought not. The biscuits are supposed to keep for a fortnight in an airtight tin, or longer in the freezer. I reckon I'll get around 30 biscuits from my sausages. 

Right, that's all for now, folks - I'll save the adventure of 'not enough petrol and I haven't brought my purse out with me' for another day - the moral of that tale is that it is not a bad plan to stash some cash somewhere out of sight in your car. Which I had. (Stashed some cash, for car parking). So I didn't. (Run out of petrol). So it wasn't. (An adventure).

Sunday 2nd December - Journeys

'Journeys' was the subject of today's church service.

We went to church in a panda. I should think our journey was much more comfortable than many of the journeys in the Bible (consider Jonah travelling by whale, with his face wrapped in seaweed. Ugh)

Obviously the 'journeys' at church did not involve pandas. (I don't think pandas are actually mentioned in the Bible.)

The first one was Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, by donkey.
The second one was the shepherds going on foot to Bethlehem.
The third journey was the several wise men going by camel (really - does it mention camels in the Bible version of the story?) also to Bethlehem.

We went to Chichester rather than Bethlehem after church, again by panda, to meet up with The Offsprings, finish my birthday celebrations (presents! presents!), break bread, or rather pizza, together, and then do a little Christmas shoppery on the way back to the car.

We saw a spectacular Christmas Tree constructed from green plastic bottles.

We also accomplished The Taking Of Photographs, as requested by my father, and The Synchronisation of Christmas and New Year Plans, or at least creating several possible variations thereof.

Then we drove back through the darkening light, trees silhouetted against an inky grey sky. In the panda. Of course.

All in all a greatly lovely day.

I have set fire to one of my birthday presents.   

Beaded interior lights for a car

Here's the picture of the lamps inside the Fiat Multipla which I couldn't post yesterday. I think they must have added retro shades to some ordinary clip-on lights.




And here's our new car... I wish I could find a way to add a chandelier....

Tuesday 23rd October - The New Car

Yes, we have swapped out both the cars, the Vauxhall Corsa AND the Alfa something-or-other (I'm no good with numbers) for a wonderful little 4-wheel-drive Panda.

It is a cheerful little vehicle, with plenty if zip, and a neat turning circle. After picking it up, we thought 'where shall we go for lunch?'

Sheffield Park seemed a good idea, fairly close, Autumn colour.... and some kind of festival going ob, as we discovered after we had joined a queue of cars bumping cautiously over a rutted way leading to the overflow car park. It would have been a nightmare in the Alfa, first pausing and gentling the car over the speed bumps, and then rolling over the ruts and tussocks of grass, wincing every time the sump guard graunched on the ground - but no - we were in the Panda, and just serenely motored along. We eyed up how far we were from the exit, how many cars were already in the overflow car park, and just headed straight for the exit. With some many other people already there, lunch wasn't going to be easy.

Never mind. We picked up the fast road from Lewes to Brighton, and discovered the Panda really is as good as we had hoped for this kind of driving, and then headed up and past Devil's Dyke to a favourite tea room/cafe we haven't visited for over a year. Why not, if it is a favourite?

The car park area for Sedlescombe Farm was Unsuitable For Alfas because of the uneven surface, potholes, and the necessity for good ground clearance. But, we were in the Panda! So we swung into the lay-by bouncing a little over the potholes and un-phased by the loose chalky surface. We were able to sit in the sun, enjoy a pleasant lunch, and read enough of the manual to work out why that little switch had it's orange light 'on', and why we would want to keep it that way (Neither of us are keen on the idea of the car switching its engine off by itself at traffic lights).

I haven't got a picture of our car - just google White Fiat Panda and that's what it looks like.

I was very amused by the Fiat Multipla parked next to us; it has the most absurd handles on the insides of the doors. This is the best angle I could find on google; you can make out the strange grey handles.



The owners of this one had found battery operated clip on lamps with beaded shades which were just perfect. But for some reason blogger is not letting me post a picture here.

I'll put one up next time.



Home then, to replace some of the piles of stuff removed from the old cars. We seem to have several of everything - first-aid kits, scrapers, yellow hi-viz jackets, car cloths....

We're still recovering from the dentist yesterday, although we were all lucky enough to just have check-ups and clean-and-polish. Even so, the anticipation, and the relief, makes for a tiring day. He has got a Proper Cold; something for me to look forward to in a few days? I hope not! 

 

Monday 30th July 2018 - The Summer Holidays Begin

  Last week - how long ago that seems now - was still a working week, at least on Monday and Tuesday. Then there was the final paperwork to be completed/scanned/emailed, and a few emails and phone calls, and last minute shuffles of next term's schedules ("I know we wanted to book the sessions for the mornings, but we now need them to be in the morning"). So, although most of the week was not timetables, it still felt like a phony holiday...neither work nor play.

Today - today -  let the holidays begin!

I have dealt with four tasks that needed doing, to get them done, and to clear them our of my head. According to Mark Twain

'If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first.'

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mark_twain_414009
Before I did any figurative frog-eating, (actually frogs' legs aren't too bad - we ate them when I was young, in  Indonesia. Not sure about the rest of the frog though, and it does seem very wasteful to only eat the legs of something and not the rest of it.) -now, where was I? oh yes, I cleaned the bathroom from top (at least, as far as I can reach) to bottom. I can be certain that all those striations in the tiles floor are exactly that - striations, and not dirty marks. There are 30 bars on the towel rail, I counted them as I burned my fingers running a damp cloth over each one. Why would all this effort make me feel so happy? It's something that has been annoying me for weeks, and now it is done. That's why!

I spent some time yesterday watching youtube videos of watercolour tutorials. There's more to this lark than applying paint to paper! This is my latest endeavour;

Two of the stones would insist on looking like sponges than pebbles. Even so, I am very encouraged. This is what I was looking at...

Nor that I was after an exact copy - just a starting point. It took all morning, because of waiting for paint to dry... an opportunity to go and pick up even more fallen apples - another hundred or so. That brings the running total to about 570 or more. This time I had to use a certain amount of caution - the wasps had reappeared and were burrowing into the  apples. I threw the apples (and quite a few wasps) into the garden waste collection bin, as when I lifted the lid of the compost bin there were hundreds of worm, clotted in knots, apparently trying to escape fro  the heap of rotten apples already in the bin.

After lunch we went on a little trippette, to look at Fiat Pandas. There is a great second-hand car place where you can wander round and look at hundreds of cars and try them for size. "Fiat Panda?" I hear you cry out in shock and surprise.

Yes, indeedy. We are seriously considering downsizing from the current Alfa something-or-other to the 2litre 4-wheel-drive Fiat Panda. The next stage is to find one to take for a test drive. It's almost as much of a seismic shift as when my Uncle and Aunt gave up Volvo Estate cars for a VW Passat. That might have happened over 35 years ago, bur I still remember the incredulous cries at this change to The Way Things Have Always Been. Ah well. Nothing stays the same for ever.

This car place is perilously close to Computer World and Hobbycraft. Oh well. It is the holidays, after all.

Thursday 10th May - More... random bits and pieces

I followed a red alfa romeo 147 down the bypass the other day. I had finished the "morning" school, and was proceeding to the "afternoon" school. "Proceeding" sounds like a good word - brisk, efficient, but not speeding (unlike a  close relative of mature years, not a member of this household, who has picked up two speeding tickets in one month and claims to have beaten his car with a stick, like John Cleese). I have to admit to some pangs - but in the end it was easier than I thought. It was travelling too slowly so I overtook it, and put it behind me. Literally and figuratively.

So far I have managed to remember all that needed to be remembered this week - music festival, changed teaching schedules, getting photocopies and so on ready in advance for lessons.... The most important thing now is to remember to do the entries for the music exams for a couple of pupils - the closing date is Friday, and I still have a question mark over two of them which is preventing me from getting on with the task.

I've been having a go at making kimchi - Korean fermented vegetables. Ever since I read

a couple of months (or was it weeks?) ago, I've become more interested in "fermented" foods. It appears that the midwife who insisted I eat plenty of live yoghurt shortly after I gave birth to the firstborn, and I was taking antibiotics for an infection (and that's enough information) was on to a Good Thing. Antibiotics kill off the Good Bacteria in your gut as well as the Bad Bacteria causing the infection. Well, I take antibiotics all the time, as one of the other potions I have been prescribed is to damp down my immune system. Apparently the stronger antibiotic I reach for if I suspect a chest infection is imminent is also known as "Domestos" becuase it "kills all known germs". In other words

The book is a good read, and debunks most of the foodie fads. But femented food (not booze, before you ask!) is a Thing to keep your gut healthy and encourage Good Bacteria (what about the Bad Bacteria? what happens to them?)

I tasted the kimchi - it is a quick version from the Good Food Guide, ready after a day and better after two weeks.

It looks Very Ominous, and smells - shall I say "potent"? Still, I didn't fall down in a faint after the little mouthful, which tasted "interesting" and even "not unpleasant" as well as "powerful". Possibly the substitution  of chipotle paste for the chilli paste, which I couldn't buy easily at the time, and cider vinegar for rice vinegar, will have made it less authentic and much hotter than it is meant to be. I'll just have to go to Wagamama and have kimchi there so see what theirs tastes like.

The little blue-lidded pot contains yesterday's home-made keffir cheese. This is a fermented milk, similar to yoghurt, but using a different sort of bacteria. I bought the starter from a health shop, followed the instructions and, hey presto - keffir. The stuff you can buy, ready-to-drink in bottles in the super market is expensive and tastes like a cross between yoghurt and buttermilk. My home-made brew hasn't pleased me as much.. However, the home-made keffir just keeps on going; just add a dollop of today's to more milk and leave it to its own business overnight. Then, filter it;

and all the sour whey drains away (couldn't resist, sorry, no, not sorry at all,) and delicious cream cheese can be scraped off the paper. Yesterday I had it mixed with salt and pepper and herbs, today with maple syrup. Tomorrow - who knows? I've still got some chipotle paste...

Finally, this is The Best Time of year to be visiting one of my schools. It is a Victorian school, cheek-by-jowl with the village church. The grass between the gravestones is left alone in Summer, because of these orchids. One of the teachers said "I've been told that they are very rare, but I never knew what they looked like." Sigh. I took this blurry picture of one right by the wall which separates the school path from the graveyard. Perhaps she never has time to look.

   
As the months go on, there will be hundreds of these flower spikes, mixed in with all different wild flowers. Mostly primroses at the moment, but some vetch and herb robert and ones I don't know the names of .

Monday 7th May - Catching Up - All About Me

I'd have to read through the pen-and-paper journal I keep in order to work out what has been happening since 11th April.

Back then, it was still the Easter holidays. A sort of leisure time - at least it was a not-teaching-children time.

(I still think of my first ever day of class music teaching, on the first day of term in January 2001; me, waiting nervously in the school hall mentally reviewing the lesson I had planned, and then the sudden roaring invasion of 33 seven-year-old boys. It was an ordinary state, mixed primary, but obviously something had affected the statistics for boys and girls and births seven years earlier. I emerged from the school hall several hours later having taught three classes, and reeling from the experience. Phrases like 'baptism of fire', 'lion taming', 'chimpanzee's tea party at London Zoo', reverberated round my mind as I staggered to the car and wobbled back home for a lie-down in a darkened room. Things have changed since then, but there are still days when I feel like I've been spinning plates for several hours.)

Where was I - oh yes, April 2018. I collected my new car on the Friday, that would have been the thirteenth (don't say it - I spent the whole day not thinking it) and dreading the drive home. To be honest, I had hated the car when I drove it at the beginning of the week - it seemed alien and wilful and sluggish and All Wrong. However, on Friday, after it had been thoroughly sorted out in the workshop, the horrible brakes had become efficient and predictable, the steering less surprising, the gear box more accommodating, and by the time I got home All Was Well. Since then I have driven several hundred miles and am slowly learning the final details -
indicators - switching and cancelling - check
windscreen wipers  - check
rear windscreen wiper - still getting random results when I try to switch them on
Heating - check- I can switch it on (necessary for the end of April) and off (necessary for the beginning of May)
Radio 4 and Classic FM in the presets - check
Lights - probably OK - I haven't driven much in the dark yet

My next challenge is the air-conditioning. I suspect it may possibly be the snowflake symbol but I need to read the manual.

The term started on Monday 16th April - with an inset day at one of the schools. Bank holidays and inset days and SATS exam week and year 5 residential trip and two routine hospital clinic days  have all played havoc with trying to schedule lessons, but I think I have managed to cram them all into this half of term.

Or I thought I had, until two routine doctor appointments, a staff training day, a broken tooth and a music festival added themselves to my diary.

The first of the clinic appointments has come and gone. No change to lung function HOORAY and THREE CHEERS! I'm always nervous when I am blowing up, no, into the weird machine in case things have taken a dive, and massively relieved when the result is 'same-old-same-old'. The consultant is also delighted to hear that I will be giving up class teaching at two schools at the end of July - that will mean 200 fewer children sneezing and snotting near me next winter.

The broken tooth is a minor affair - I'm not in any pain, and there are no sharp edges. Turns out part of an ancient crown has sheared off. I've chosen to have the crown replaced BEFORE it starts giving me any jip, and have managed to arrange an appointment for a time when I'm not teaching - perfect.

This coming week has the music festival, but only four days - phew - and next week the exam week, so there will be less teaching, and the following week is the one with my next clinic day, which means a day off teaching, and then it is half term.

I reckon I can get through this lot - so long as I can keep track of which pupils have been moved to which times because of all that is going on...

Right. That's enough for now - I'll write about the books I've been reading and the family doings next time. Hopefully sooner than next month!


 

Wednesday 11th April 2018 - So what does my new car look like?

I realised this morning that I couldn't remember anything about what a Vauxhall Corsa looks like. Apart from it being a two-door hatchback, and being black. Something like this, maybe?  

anysnapshot.com

In the morning we did a bits and pieces - arranging the insurance for my new supercar, turning up to play for a church service/sing-along at a local home (standing in for the usual pianist; catastrophe averted - I was convinced it was on Thursday, but he was certain it was today - and he was right!)

Then into town to buy mundane essentials missed off the proper list, and to shift the money into the right account, ready to pay, and also a chance to have another look at a black Vauxhall Corsa, parked a few spaces along from us.

Turns out it looks more like this -

thenounproject.com

higher and dumpier than my old car, but plenty of room in the boot for the samba drums and djembe and all the other stuff I load up with in the mornings.

Lunch in town, then home to carry on with the good work - unearthing all the components for a Poang chair which is going to the new flat. In the process we have sorted out quite a lot of ancillary stuff - who knew there was all that lego in the bottom of the cupboard? And empty cardboard boxes and other stuff to sort into charity donation, recycle and chuck-in-the-bin.

We've also finished the jigsaw (and the cheese straws) this afternoon. A slight crisis - one of the pieces was missing;



This is the first time the puzzle has been out of the box - were we going to have to send off to the manufacturers for a replacement?

Turns out there was an easy answer; the piece had fallen onto the chair, and Leo was asleep on it.



It's a very pretty picture, with loads of "whimsy" pieces and trick pieces to add to the interest (and difficulty).



One to do again. It was surprisingly enjoyable, and peaceful, working on the jigsaw together - I foresee the beginnings of a new tradition of holiday jigsaws.

Tuesday 10th April - Day Out in Kent and East Sussex

Today we took my red alfa romeo to the garage for its annual service and MOT.

We made a day of it - so, after leaving my car to their tender mercies, we went to investigate Chiddingstone; a pleasant drive through the countryside? Not exactly. The weather was dull, but not actually raining, and to our surprise, there was a thick mist over Ashdown Forest...

Chiddingstone is where the Streatfeild family come from - anyone who has read and enjoyed "Ballet Shoes" and "Wimples Wonders" and a hundred other books by Noel Streatfeild will understand why I was interested. As it happens, I had just finished reading the first book of her fictionlised autobiography, "A Vicarage Family" last night.

The village is supposed to be "the prettiest village in Kent" and a "rare example of a Tudor single-street village", rescued from development by the National Trust in 1939.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chiddingstone_Village_High_Street_-_geograph.org.uk_-_151560.jpg

 
This is just about the entire village, the church is on the opposite site of the road, and the castle (an imposing Victorian Gothic rebuild on the site of the various original houses and manors.)

The picture doesn't do it justice, but then neither did the weather today, so after looking round the church, and buying a packet or sweets in the Post Office (possibly England's oldest shop, in business since 1453) we left, and headed back south to Lewes.

The fog had lifted, fractionally, from the Ashdown Forest, so that I could just catch tantalising glimpse of where the views would be.

Lewes; for lunch at The Needlemakers, and a look-around, and an excellent butterscotch and pecan slice at Waterstones, and then to ring the garage to see how they were getting on.

Ah, not such good news. If your car has done in excess of 110,000 miles, and is over 12 years old, you are rather on borrowed time. It failed the MOT on the condition of the floor panels long before they got onto other bits like the engine.

We came up with various strategies for coping with this unscheduled event as we made out way back to the garage. The garage owner had also had some thoughts...

The upshot is that I have test-driven a black (black? We've never had a black car before! Alfas should be red, if possible) Vauxhall Corsa (Vauxhall Corsa? I thought other people drove those, not me!) and decided that it is too good a buy to miss. One lady owner, full service history done by the garage owner, scant 20,000 miles on the clock, cheaper servicing, cheaper tax, cheaper insurance, cheaper tyres... Driving it was a bit of a white-knuckle ride to begin with, probably because it works so much better than my alfa - the clutch is so light, and bites near the middle instead of almost at the bottom, the gears are precise, the steering is accurate, the ride is taught, and the engine is remarkably quiet, with no familiar rattles...

So, just in time for the beginning of term, I will be the slightly surprised owner of a black Vauxhall Corsa. It will be ready for collection at the end of the week.

The only problem will be finding it in the car park....

Saturday 13th May - Two weeks pass in a flash

Hi everyone,

Where have I been? Well, here actually, but it's been a pretty harum-scarum couple of weeks.

Monday 1st May was a Bank Holiday - we didn't do anything much, as far as I can remember, (but I could be wrong...). It was very pleasant to be "unscheduled",

no, hang about, I remember, my father walked up on the previous Saturday afternoon when it was bright and sunny - why? was it just for a walk and say hello? Anyway, it came to supper time, and he took us to a local pub for steaks (I had sea bass), and a pleasant afternoon turned into a convivial evening. All the better for being unexpected and what's that word for "as a surprise" or "Off the cuff". I'm losing my vocabulary....

The following week my work was spent playing "catch-up" because all the Monday schools now had to be moved to Friday, and "could I go on another day because the school photographer was coming in" and so forth. My paper diary looks like a trendy modern scribble picture.

Last weekend - what happened then? We went round to a friend's, with our lawnmower, as their was out of action and the new one wouldn't be arriving for a while. In return for cake and tea and strawberry tartlets (oh yes indeedy, strawberry tartlets) we, or rather BB mowed the grass, while friend and I set the world to rights.

The week that has just gone past, was spent playing "catch-up", no, wait, didn't i say that about last week? It was the week of school SATS weeks, so, once again, morning schools got rescheduled or cancelled. That turned out to be a lucky thing; I was feeling a bit trepidatiorous about my car's handbrake. I have had the handbrake fail completely, when I was waiting halfway up a ramp to exit a car-park, and some impatient old buffer was tailgating me up the ramp. I had to sit and Think Very Carefully about how I was going to persuade my car to zoom up the ramp without rolling back onto the buffer's bumpers or rocketing out into the traffic at the top of the ramp. I did manage it, leaving a cloud of black smoke behind to blind the buffer, but it was a torrid experience. So, wondering if I was being a bit over-sensitive, I drove to the garage. It was quite pleasing to be told that yes, a new caliper was required. That feeling of satisfaction of being right was almost (but not quite) worth the cost of the repair.

I've planted out my sunflower seedlings, and so far the slugs haven't eaten them.

I've harvested a handful of spinach leaves, and one pak choi, and sown some carrot seeds, surrounded by tiny basil seedlings which I hope will keep the carrot fly away. This vegetable gardening thing is very exciting! This is what it looks like now;

And here is how the bag nearest the camera (spinach and spring onions) looked at the end of April - what a difference. Totally amazing. The pellets are made of stinky wool - the smell goes after a few days - and do a brilliant job of keeping the slugs off.

And here's the pak choi back in April - it is in the bag behind the spinach and spring onions.

I've reached the weekend now, with all deadlines met, had tricky discussion with my boss about some of my work (that went ok), careful emails to parents who might, or might not have paid me for lessons (they had) and another potentially sticky situation also avoided. Apart from blog posts, and a couple of lesson write-ups, and a phone call to a parent to arrange the next lesson date, and some lesson plans to email in, and a couple of appointment times at my next hospital check-up to clarify, and a bit of re-organising in order to fit a zimmer frame in my car (I'm giving someone a lift to church, and she has recently acquired a zimmer frame) I think I may well be pretty much in the clear now - or is that a really, really foolish thing to say????

Roll on next week - it will be almost normal, apart from a music festival and a hospital check-up day causing the rescheduling of two schools and extra lessons to compensate for the day out of school.

This term is not going to run to a "normal" timetable until after the Halfterm break. So, harum-scarum is how it is going to stay for now!
  
  

Monday 1st February - Invisible People

I've frequently heard it said (by women) that they become invisible once they are over 50.

Let's test the theory....

This afternoon, I was driving along, fairly briskly when I realised that it was not the curve in the road which made the oncoming white van appear to be overtaking the car in front - he was ACTUALLY OVERTAKING THE CAR IN FRONT, AND DRIVING ON MY SIDE OF THE ROAD! And making no effort to slow, pull back in, do anything sensible. A full emergency stop on my part (luckily no-one is behind me) enabled him to carry on overtaking without any hindrance from other road users.

Later, closer to home, the opposite side of the road was (as usual) cluttered with parked vehicles, but my side (as usual) was clear. This made it nice and easy for the bus driver coming towards me. He (it was a man) just had to swing out and continue on my side of the road. No problems for him, but  it meant another try out for my brakes and tyres so he too could proceed without inconvenience.

I may be an invisible woman (being over 50) but surely a bright red Alfa Romeo with headlights on is moderately noticeable? Something along these lines. But British. And me driving it, obviously.




Apparently not. I shall get it re-sprayed fluorescent pink.

 

Not that I think it will make much difference.

Thursday 30th July - A mystery

Can you see these vertical lines on my car headlamp?

WHAT has made them?

A snail, maybe? We spotted these weird tracks last November on the bonnet of a car; a bit of research confirmed that they were caused by a snail grazing on the gubbins growing on the car.

If I increase the size of the picture of the car, you can see the tracks more clearly;

Well, that's a maybe - but ol' snaily seems to be going in a remarkably straight line. Perhaps the ones on the silver car were giant drunken snails, and mine was a tee-totaller?

Tuesday 4th November - Car Spotting

This morning, first thing, I was teaching in a school in a town twenty miles away from home.

This morning, a bit later on, my husband was driving my father to drop him off at the hospital in the same town for the second of his cataract operations (this first was last month, and went very well).

So, all the way home, until I reached the motorway, I found myself scanning the oncoming traffic to see if I would spot my husband's car. Except, of course, when I was otherwise occupied by roundabouts, cyclists, roadworks and other random hazards along the way.

Anyway, turns out that they arrived at the hospital in good time (driving gently) and my husband made the return journey rather more briskly, so he arrived home barely ten minutes behind me.

Heigh ho - car spotting livened up a rather dull commute.

Sunday 29th June - Learner Driving along

We had a very pleasant trip back to my son's flat this afternoon - with him doing the driving!

Maybe an Alfa-Romeo is not the most suitable car for a learner driver, but we have a history of unsuitable learner-driver cars in our family.

My husband learned on ancient tractors, cranky old land-rovers, and whatever else was lying around the farm that could be made to go. He tells hair-raising stories of cramming an 1800 Maxi engines into an mini --- and succeeding --- and then driving the horrid contraption around until the inevitable inevitably occurred. Apparently there were issues; "It was nose-heavy, the drive shafts were seriously unequal; actually it was more or less undriveable, but very interesting." Yes. Quite. It was never road legal, so confined to the farm tracks.

My first ever driving experience was in an Alfa Romeo Berlina. It probably looked like this. Except this one is clean and shiny.



The experience was relatively short lived. My father's comments when I attempted reverse were memorable (no-one told me that you had to use the clutch for reverse as well as forward gears. This kind of thing is not obvious to everyone). It ended with demolition of the wooden gatepost at the entrance to the driveway. My mother shot out of the kitchen door at the speed of light and I abandoned the car in the hedge and that was that.

Later, much, much later, I started driving lessons, and my first car was a Sunbeam Stiletto. One of these:



(That isn't mine - for a start it isn't rusty, and for another it doesn't look as though it needs topping up with oil, water, air, brake fluid and clutch fluid before every trip. The petrol tank at least didn't leak. But then what do you expect for £141, even back in 1983?)

They are a poor man's Porsche - an over-exciteable rear engine sports-mobile. The tyre pressures say it all - 16psi  at the front, and 32psi at the rear. Go figure, as my Canadian friends are wont to say. Given the least excuse it would swap swap ends at any speed over about 30 miles an hour. Like red setter dogs, they have a desperate prediliction for ditches. In a strong wind they will do a vertical take-off and landing into the next lane without any warning. I learned ALL SORTS of things in that car... like how to enter roundabouts at speed, traverse them with the car sliding diagonally round, until, with a twitch of the steering wheel and a blip of the throttle the back end would flip round and I would accelerate out of my exit. If you are ever following one of these, give it plenty of road-room.

So it seemed entirely reasonable to let my son practice his driving in my 2 litre twinspark.Alfa 147. My husband was the co-pilot, and I managed not to be too much of a backseat driver (it IS my car, after all!) He did a jolly good job too - no gateposts were in any danger at any point in the whole trip.