Saturday 27th June - rest and relaxation

 After yesterday's ridiculously early start and busy morning we were both ready for Very Early Night last night. Indeed we slept through the thunder and lightning and heavy rain - a friend told me this morning that it had kept her awake! If she hadn't mentioned it I wouldn't have known, as there was no sign of it when we got up at 6.

I met up in the park with a group of friends - teaching colleagues - that I haven't seen for years. It was lovely to hear th

eir news and what they were doing now, ranging from 'retired and loving it', to 'working part-time in a gift shop an loving it'; a few were working in teaching related areas, but no one was still class teaching. The modern classroom is a whole new world these days. 

Lunch; I'd poached some salmon fillets yesterday morning. Those, arranged on the plates with a decorative line of mayonnaise, accompanied by a near instant salad of a packet of Tilda's precooked rice with sweetcorn and peas and french dressing stirred in, couldn't have been easier. No-cook either, unless you count tipping frozen veg into a bowl and zapping them for a few minutes as cooking.

After lunch we sat in the last patch of shade near the house, a little table which should hopefully become the kitchen sink, and currently has my herb pots.  

This is looking across to what will become the living area...

Yesterday's meeting with the builder and architect was very useful and reassuring; the traffic lights are amber (wait), moving to green (GO!) over the next week... all being well, with a fair wind...    

Friday 26th June - prepping...

 Not the 'armageddon survivalist kind of prepping... just 'heatwave survival' prepping.

After another hot and sticky and restless night, and a other very early 'rise and shine' (hello sun, good morning, do you know what time it is?) I got up and plunged straight into a luke warm shower before I could think too much about the day ahead. Oh yes! That made all the difference! 

By 7am we had finished breakfast - BB is still eating porridge in the mornings but I've switched cold cereal  - and we're relaxing with the First of our three coffees of the day.

By 7.30 I was in full prep mode;

Crustless quiche going in to the air fryer:

And 25 minutes later;

Broccoli prepped and in a microwave pan ready to zap in the microwave, and two fillets of salmon poached for 8 minutes in water with peppercorns, rosemary, bay leaves and a sliver of lemon.

We'll have crustless quiche, broccoli and air fryer frites for lunch today.

 The salmon is for tomorrow with my go-to dressing of equal quantities mayonnaise and Greek yoghurt, some French dressing to taste, and lemon or mint or finely chopped pickled gherkin or something.

I have a pint bottle full of water with a green tea teabag infusing in the fridge... I just keep topping up the bottle more water until the teabag stops working.

We've been eating lunch outside at this little round table;

BB  cleared the erigeron daisies from underneath, while I was meal prepping. They were so pretty, like the ones under the bigger table nearby. But they were full of little black insects, or maybe ants, that kept biting my ankles! Once we finished our coffee he'll remove the others ones... more bitey insects and, regretfully, they are a bit of a trip hazard. It's only 9.30 am, and still relatively cool here.

The sun slowly creeps up the grass towards the house until the only bit of shade at lunchtime is here, and that's gone by 1pm. After then, all the garden is in full sun except under the apple tree at the bottom. 

An early lunch has to be the order of the day!

The afternoons have been hard going... so hot... today we have a site meeting with the architect and the builder, to dot some 'i's' and cross some 't's', with a view to agreeing a start date of 6th July. I reckon that where I'm sitting now should be about where the little table in our new extension will be. Now there's a vision to cling to.

The recipe originally came from the good food website. I like it because it doesn't use cream, which I almost never have in the house. Today's version has more cheese, and no pancetta/bacon, and mixed peppers.

Tuesday 23rd June - it's too darn hot

 Normal blogging will resume tomorrow... maybe. 

Ang sent me a link to this today...

'Too darn hot' from Kiss Me Kate on Broadway. 

I hope they had air conditioning on stage!

Sunday 21st June - Out and about

 We met up with our son and daughter about 45 mins drive away. That meant going over the top of the South Downs, which meant seeing the beautiful view across the valley towards Amberley. Sadly I don't have any photographs...

But I do have a sketch of a very similar view, from Ditchingly Beacon as opposed to Bury Hill (Summer 2021)

Do you know this version of the popular hymn 'All things bright and beautiful' composed by John Rutter?

Friday 19th June - I received a cable!

(I've pinched the blog title from Ang!)

 I remember visiting Porthcurno in Cornwall, on the beach below the Minack open-air theatre and seeing the curiously small and insignificant hut where the huge, vital trans-world undersea cables came in;

Oh my, this brought back memories of watching a play as the sun set into the sea, a fishing boat slowly making it's way across the horizon...

The sea really was this colour, the sand really is golden....

The hut is at the head of the beach. We trudged up the sand to see the massive tarry cables emerge up through the floor, and continue to the office (now a museum) at the top.

But I digress. It wasn't that sort of cable...

I was momentarily baffled that she had only sent one photograph of the squares in the write-up, but she had created two the same. I love tracing the paths of the different strands in cable knitting. 

It's a nice shade of green, very soft wool with good stitch definition so the cable really stands out. 

The flat gift is an interesting guide to a textile exhibition she went to at Blickling Hall with fascinating pictures and information. 

I sent her a square from one of my favourite patterns for knitted squares;

You cast on enough stitches for two sides, and steadily decrease at the centre until you are left with only three stitches, which you knit together. The thing to watch out for with this version is you do a double decrease in every other row... you have to keep track of where you are and what you are doing! It's not as easy as marking the centre with a stitch marker, as the centre stitch is involved in the double decrease (slip 1, knit 2 together, passed slipped stitch over). I call this 'mindful knitting' and not entirely relaxing! 

(For 'mindless knitting' I  mark the centre and do a single k2tog after the marker on every row. Not as tidy, but with fuzzy yarn like this who can tell?)

The pattern actually called for Liquorice Allsorts stripes;

but I used self-striping yarn and let it do its thing. Two ends to sew in instead of many.

I've kept the pale square and sent Ang the darker one; it looked a little neater.

Finally, another flashmob. Clearly a setup, but still brilliant. The 'flute' player, Michel Tirabosco, is amazing. 

Thursday 18th June - Four bags and one box gone!

Yesterday we did a quick round trip - Aldi, to leave a box of books that I'm selling back to World of Books in the in-post lockers, and the British Heart Foundation to leave four bags of bric-a-brac and other stuff - some books WoB wouldn't take, a couple of school bags (when did I stop teaching? when did my daughter leave school?) and oddments of china. Gone, gone, gone!

We use the British Heart Foundation because it has a space at the back entrance where you can stop easily for dropping things off. I always ring a charity shop and check first to save a wasted journey as sometimes they can't accept donations for some reason or another. This time they seemed very pleased at the idea of four bags coming their way, so that was good.

I've another box of books ready to go to WoB now. That will make six boxes and bags to charity by the end of June, so I'm back on track for the 'two boxes a month' New Year Resolution. 

It occurred to me that the money I get back on the books could go some way to feeding my own book-buying...

....

Today was a cardiology appointment (all's well, no changes) and I had found out that there was a Little Free Library near the clinic premises. So we detoured there as it was on my list of places to visit, with a couple more Wob rejects and a Judi Dench biography to leave as a swap. Or just leave.

But we were out of luck;

It had been taken down on 9th June for repairs. Ah well, I'll put the books in the next charity shop bag.