love those cupcakes

Miscellany

There have been some spectacular sunsets lately, with each one more stunning than the last.  Vivid orange, red, pink, magenta.  It used to be said that they're seen here because of all the surrounding heavy industry but much of that has long disappeared.  Whatever the reason,  I can't get enough and with every one make a grab for the camera (whilst hoping our neighbours over the road don't get the wrong idea about what I'm up to).

My mum was an October baby (Aunty M, too, though twenty years later) and on her birthday every year when I was growing up, my dad would give me a ten bob note from his till to go and buy flowers from Belt's, the local shop on the other side of the marketplace for all things floral.  Every year I'd choose those huge headed bronze chrysanthemums which forever since I've associated with my mother.  I went in search for some on what would have been her birthday the other day but had to make do with a multi cooured bunch of smaller specimens from the supermarket.

The Boy and I travelled up the A19 to Gateshead to spend a couple of hours in the company of Nigella at The Sage.  It was a nightmare of a journey, with traffic jams and road closures and badly signposted diversions and an increasingly ratty driver (who, moi?), but we only missed about 15 minutes and an entertaining evening was had by all. 

There was a Q and A session in the second half, with unscreened questions from the audience (how risky is that?).  There were the predictable ones ('What would you choose as your final death row meal?' 'Do your children cook?') but the best was from a young woman querying the contents of Nigella's utensil drawer.  It went something like this: 'I really like those cup measures you use on the telly and I've searched for them everywhere but just can't find any in the shops or online so that's a shame and where do you buy your knives because I bought a set from The Range and when I put them in the dishwasher the handles fell off?'. 

A mooch in the charity shop (there's a very good Oxfam one near here where prices are very reasonable) resulted in book purchases (three for me and a sparkly one for the littlest) and a bar of chocolate (not 'pre-loved', I hasten to add) for the non book reading (like Kanye and Trump, apparently) mister. 

 

 

Yoga hasn't been featuring much at all recently.  Following a skin biopsy (still awaiting results) and stitches, the advice was yes, you can do yoga but no, you cannot stretch for three weeks.  A tad oxymoronic, methinks.  So I've been sitting on my mat on the floor in the spare bedroom, managing not much more than some half hearted toe wiggling.

 

My favourite yarn shop at the coast offers a programme of craft workshops throughout the year and, as I'd enjoyed two previous needle felting sessions, I signed up for a third.  The aim of this one was to produce a woolly landscape based on a picture of choice (I plumped for one of my photographs from the Antarctic adventure, with a blue, white and grey palette) as inspiration.  Five relatively pain free (just the one elastoplast on this occasion) hours flew past as we all cracked on with our pictures, stabbing tufts of wool into rectangles of old blanket, which were finally glued onto canvassses.  Mine was, oh, what's the word........hideous.  The mister, he of few words and even fewer compliments, was struck dumb at the sight of it.  Like so many of my attempts at crafting, it ended up in the bin.  Ah, well.  Nothing ventured and all that.  And at least there was a glimpse of the sea.

 

I resisted the call of the vacuum cleaner one morning (to be fair, it doesn't take much to turn a deaf ear) to tag along on the dog walk  through the wood that's just five minutes from our front door.  The lure of the beck was just too much for a certain spaniel to resist.  Photographing berries and fallen leaves and soggy dog proved  too much for someone else to resist.

 

 

 

Later today, there's a talk at the central library in town on Amazing Teesside Women.  Maybe I'll get a mention.

 

Like Anne of Green Gables, I love Octobers, me.

 

I have never

.....learned to swim.  Yet somehow I produced a fish-like Boy who competed at national level.

 

.....mastered the handstand.  Or the cartwheel.  Or roller skates.

 

.....climbed a tree.   Fortunately for our garden, other people have and still do.

 

.....visited any part of the continent of Africa.  For a number of reasons, I probably never will.  Ditto Australia/Oceania.  Although isn't there a saying, 'Never say never'?

 

.....properly gotten over my fear of dogs.   Lovely Boo (who, by the way, seems to be showing some signs of improvement but there's another trip to see the vet later today) doesn't scare me but many other dogs do.  This can make for very interesting dog walks. 

 

.....willingly parked my car between two other vehicles.  Just. Can't. Do. It.  Even though said car is not an Aston Martin.  Even if it means I end up parking miles away from where I'm meant to be and having to get the bus in.

 

.....danced on a table.  I've danced on a variety of stages but a table?  None that I remember.

 

.....read an entire play by Shakespeare.  I was meant to read Romeo and Juliet as part of the English Literature syllabus at my girls' grammar school but I didn't get very far into it at all.  It was a similar story with Julius Caesar and other writers' works including  Wind in the Willows and The Grapes of Wrath.  I did read Cranford and Northanger Abbey, though many years after I was supposed to.  Needless to say, my GCE exam resulted in a big fat fail.

 

.....ridden on a motorbike.  Scooters, yes, and a particularly memorable ride on one whilst spending the summer on a Greek island, when a young donkey with an impressive set of gnashers inexplicably took a fancy to me, or, more accurately, my rear end.  It was traumatic.  For both of us.

 

.....driven an HGV.  I always fancied having a go with a Class 1 truck but, given my less than skilful reversing, it's probably best I didn't.

 

.....gotten a tattoo.  My dad and my much older brother each had one on their forearms, which used to fascinate me when I was little, but I never took the plunge.  None of my friends have one, either.  None that I can see, anyway.

 

.....dyed my hair a completely different colour.  I've always been blonde.  Various shades, some more flattering than others (I'll never forget the time I looked in the mirror in the dodgy hair salon and Myra Hindley stared back at me), and occasionally with a scattering of reddish hued highlights, but always blonde.

 

.....taken a holiday on my own.  I've travelled on my own but there has always been someone at the other end to join up with.  Unlike my brother who, apart from the several times he took me with him, was always a lone traveller.

 

.....lived on my own.  Even when I went to university the boyfriend-turned-mister tagged along and we shared a flat (well, it was more an attic space with a Baby Belling) in Leamington Spa for three years.

 

.....been as old as I am now.  I love birthdays, me.  Especially when they involve a vegan brownie topped and dripping with caramel cake.

 

Weekend in verbs

Enjoying a sticky treat (dark chocolate and quinoa, so practically a superfood)  from the farmers market for an al fresco breakfast.

 Cursing the (huge) source of all those leaves covering the garden and thinking maybe we should swap Boo for one of these.

Feeling smug at successfully growing Virginia stock from seed.

Wondering when the night scented stock sown at the same time will put in an appearance.

Realising certain aspects of my role here are now redundant after the boy baked his own birthday cake.  Four layers of Madeira-like sponge with white chocolate ganache and waves of Belgian white chocolate curls.  Nine eggs and half a dairy of butter.  Next year he can buy his own birthday presents.

Continuing to leave the hair straighteners unplugged and resorting to intervention as humid conditions prevail.

Remembering the time my hair was always worn au naturel, and, with a picture of an eighteen year old self in my head, asking the mister if my currently wild locks reminded him of anyone from way back. 

Pausing only ever so slightly, he replied:

 'Lionel Ritchie'.

 

Idle chatter

Sweet smells are an important part of my life.  I wear perfume every day, use scented hand creams (the current favourite is ginger), there are fragranced candles and melts dotted about the house, we have room sprays and those little bottles of smelly stuff that you plonk sticks in.  I buy things like bathroom sprays, shampoo and washing up liquid,  laundry powder and handwash (ooh, chocolate orange and bubblegum) purely based on their pong.  

Memories, as we all know, are so often tied up with scents.  

Like my mum's face cream, my gran's Sunday lunch apple pies, Lyons' coffee bubbling away on the gas stove in the percolator 'bought' by my parents with Embassy cigarette coupons, the first bottle of scent ('Miss Americana') I bought for myself.  

Like the sawdust that covered every surface in my friend's grandad's workshop which we visited to collect little offcuts of wood and which I discovered many years later was where the coffins were made for his undertakers business.

Like the calomine lotion dabbed on 'midgie' bites in the summer, teeny paper wrapped rectangles of cinnamon flavoured Dentyne chewing gum, ink stained fingers after practising joined up writing in junior school using scratchy pens dipped in inkwells filled by that week's Ink Monitor, the perfectly folded packets of Beecham's powders my brother always insisted cured every ill.

Like the kitchen sink being scrubbed with Vim, the green blocks of Fairy household soap my dad used to wash his hair, the mister's aroma of patchouli oil when we first met.  

So so many, a whiff of any of which would catapult me right back. 

A recent present from me to me (why, thank you) was another candle.  

Oh my goodness.  It's the smell of packets of crunchy Parma violets, of little bunches of purple flowers with heart shaped leaves which used to appear on the nature table at the back of Mrs Whitehouse's classroom, of Yardley Christmas gifts bought for my mum at the Co-op chemists with a ten bob note from my dad and enough left over to buy something for everyone else on my list.  A tad expensive but so beautifully packaged and so highly fragranced, I may not need to light it.

A new (to me) aran jumper also found its way through the letterbox (actually it was left by the garden gate).  It's a lovely handknit and, after a careful wash (I'm renowned for my efforts at keeping Barbie's wardrobe well stocked), now smells of what the container describes as 'Sunburst'.  

Still doesn't make me look like Alexa Chung, though.