So today I decided to give in to the nagging of several colleagues who think I’ve been overdoing it, by taking the day off in lieu of some of the additional hours I’ve been working. I had a lazy morning and didn’t set my alarm, though I did sneakily log on and check my email before lunch – and was caught doing so by one of the very colleagues who had told me firmly to take the day off. Drat!

There is a Noel Coward play on at Malvern Theatres at the moment, and I generally enjoy his plays. Private Lives and Design for Living are two of my favourites, but this was a new one to me – Star Quality. It’s his final play, and I hadn’t even heard of it before, so I wanted to see it. But while I’m this tired, I really don’t want to go out in the evenings, and I’m busy with friends and family this weekend so the Saturday matinée is out of the reckoning. So the only way I was going to see the play was by going to the mid-week matinée. That was an added incentive to take today off.

It wasn’t a classic Coward, and I could see why I’d not come across it before, as it isn’t performed as often as his earlier plays.  It’s definitely not in the same league as some of his other works, though the trademark Coward wit and repartee were still there. The plot was clearly drawn from his life, with him sticking firmly to subjects that he knew intimately. It was about an innocent young playwright who had written a brilliant new play, the very temperamental leading lady who was a highly demanding diva, the ruthless producer trying to pull it all together with the help of his outrageously camp boyfriend/assistant, and various sundry lesser actors/actresses all caught up in the battles between the three leading protagonists. Cue hissy fits all round.

The actors were all hamming it up – and sometimes it was difficult to tell when their character was acting hammily, and when they themselves were overcooking it.  They also stumbled over their lines a few times – and again sometimes that was deliberate but sometimes definitely not. It turns out that this is the first week of the company’s tour around the UK, but even so one does expect professional actors to be totally fluent with their lines from day one – or, in this case, day two. The scene-stealer was Lola, a small white dog who was carried around by the leading actress. She behaved impeccably, and was the only character on stage who could not be accused of over-acting!

I’m pleased I’ve seen the play, as my curiosity is now satisfied, though I don’t think I’ll bother going if I see it staged again. And it was good to have a day off as TOIL after the hard work of participating in the equipment trial. I did feel out of place though – weekday matinées are clearly the preserve of the retired – I must have been the youngest person in the audience by fifteen to twenty years!

Since then, I’ve had Rob back here on numerous occasions, and each time he’s asked whether I want him to do the kitchen – even offering to honour the original quote which is now over 18 months out of date. My answer was always the same – I really wanted to have it done, but I couldn’t cope with living through the actual doing. The most recent occasion was before Christmas, when he was repainting the hall ceiling after the incident with the leaking hot water system.  But then I had  sudden brainwave. I was at the time bidding at work for a project which would require me to participate in some equipment trials at our Hampshire offices, which would mean staying at a hotel down there for at least a week and a half at the end of January.  I said to Rob that if (i) I won the bid and got on contract, (ii) his diary was free over the dates of the trial, (iii) he was prepared to do absolutely everything himself – I was intending to keep right out of the way, so he’d have to clear the kitchen and put it back the way he’d found it, and (iv) I would be unable to take calls during the day as I’d be with my customers, so he’d have to use his own judgement on any issues he came across and just update me over the phone in the evenings if necessary – then we would have a deal. He agreed to those terms, and we pencilled the dates in subject to final confirmation if and when I won the contract.

The contract did come through in time, so for the last week and a bit I’ve been living out of a suitcase in Hampshire. Meanwhile, Rob has had a key to the house and has been getting on with the kitchen. It’s not quite finished – he thinks there’s about two days left doing the woodwork – but it’s looking good so far.  And I’ve escaped almost all of the disruption! I will be so pleased when it is done – another thing to cross off the to-do list.

The upshot of all this is that, for the past few years the kitchen has four different colours of skirting board (dark green, light green, white and brown), two different colour walls (cream and magnolia), two different colours on the ceiling (cream and white), the doors are either dark green or white, and I absolutely loathe the tiles on the splash-back! Plus the walls and ceiling are covered in two different patterns of wood-chip paper, both hideous. The rest of the house is so much better, and the kitchen really does look grotty in comparison.  I’ve had a number of quotes over the past ten years to do the work, which is actually surprisingly affordable as I don’t want to change the kitchen cabinets or work-surfaces. But I still can’t face the disruption of not having a usable kitchen for nearly two weeks – which is what Rob my trusty decorator has estimated it will take.

I have however recently come up with a cunning plan, so I hope that I may be able to square the circle and get it done with minimum disruption.

It tells me how often pages are viewed (about 30-40 page views per day, over the past month, on average, and even on Christmas Day about a dozen of you checked up on me, which was nice of you!), and who the top referrers are (Frosty Intervals by a wide margin, but also Kevin/Joan’s and Ryan’s blogs usually feature). One stat which I found interesting this week is the record of the top-five search terms that people use to find the blog:  “icyjumbo blog” and “A mammoth undertaking Chris Booth” are both fairly obvious ones which I would expect. But this week a new search term has appeared on the top five list – “icyjumbo pillows” which is leading people to this post about a way of arranging pillows that my Gran learned as a trainee nurse before the second world war.

There was clearly a story behind this spike in interest in an obscure blog page written over 18 months ago. It turns out that my sister has a colleague whose husband is recovering from a fairly significant operation.  He slept pretty badly in hospital, as he couldn’t get comfortable even with the fully-adjustable hospital bed, and his wife was concerned about how he would cope back home in an ordinary bed. So my sister told her about our family’s way of arranging pillows, and said that I’d blogged about it with detailed photographic instructions when Chris had a bad back. She did a search for “icyjumbo pillows”, found the photos, and printed off the page for her colleague. It was subsequently reported back that the colleague’s husband had slept so much better using “the pillows” than he had in hospital, and was really pleased to learn the method. It looks to me as if he’s been recommending it onwards, possibly to other patients at the outpatients clinic, and telling them how to search for it.

That’s really nice to know – that complete strangers are getting a better night’s sleep as a result of a throw-away blog post which has taken on a life of its own since I posted it. My mother is rather annoyed though – she says that if she’d known I was going to post the photos, she’d have ironed the sheets first!

Anyway, I was in work earlier than usual, logged on to my computer and looked at my on-line calendar to see what meetings people had booked for me while I was off. It was then that I made the horrid discovery. I had booked Tuesday off as annual leave and forgotten all about it! With all the stress of meetings and milestones before Christmas, I had forgotten to synchronise my work and home diaries, and the booked leave hadn’t made it into my 2012 diary.  There was no point in going home at that stage – since I was in work I might as well make the most of it and do something useful. Oh I was cross with myself!

Ta Prohm - hard to tell which is temple tower and which is tree trunk

You can see the damage that the tree roots are doing – the walls are just collapsing under the relentless weight and pressure of the trees.

Ta Prohm doorway

This picture was taken about 5 seconds after a large party of Koreans finally moved out of the way. I love the way the tree roots are framing the doorway.

Banteay Kdei emerging from the undergrowth

Finally, this is the neighbouring temple of Banteay Kdei. This one is smaller and less visited than the previous ones, and my guide and I virtually had it to ourselves. You can see how quickly it would be swallowed up again by the jungle if the authorities stop trying to maintain it.

My resolutions/plans for the coming year, in no particular order, include

• Fixing the leak in the porch roof, which drips every time it rains
• Getting the kitchen decorated
• Starting to plant some interesting climbers on the terraces in the garden
• Increasing my hours at work – but in a sustainable way, so that I avoid an exhaustion-triggered collapse
• Scattering some more of Christopher’s ashes somewhere interesting
• Keeping on blogging

On that last point. Christopher and I originally started this blog as an account of living with (and subsequently dying from) cancer. I then kept it up as a diary of coming to terms with being widowed, and putting my life back together again. My sister tells me that it now reads like a blog about maintaining and renovating an old house, and there is certainly that aspect to it too – though I think that’s partly a coping mechanism / displacement activity on my part. I can’t bring Chris back, but I can make this house more comfortable.

I find blogging helps me – as indeed it helped Chris. And I keep going with it, even though it’s sometimes an effort, because I can see from the stats that people read it, and some of you comment. That makes it all worthwhile. So please do keep on reading and commenting – it is really helpful to me even if it doesn’t seem so to you!

Serves 4-6 [but it scales down well for 1 or 2. I made enough for 2 then reheated the leftovers the next day]

• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2.5cm piece root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• 1kg lean lamb e.g. shoulder or leg, cubed
• salt & freshly ground pepper
• juice of 2 pomegranates, about 300ml
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin [I leave this out]
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed [I leave these out too]
• 85ml greek yogurt
• pomegranate seeds to garnish
• fresh mint to garnish [I leave this out as well]

Heat the oil in a large flameproof casserole [or a tagine]. Add the onion, garlic and ginger and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and set aside. In the same pan, brown the lamb on all sides, in batches and set aside. Return the onion, garlic, ginger and lamb to the pan. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Gradually stir in the pomegranate juice, allowing each addition to be absorbed before adding more. There should be very little liquid left. [This bit never seems to work for me. I always end up with quite a lot of liquid left. But I just keep going, and cook the lamb in whatever liquid is left, and boil it off at the end if it looks too sloppy]

Add the cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom to the pan [or if you are a wuss with spices like me, then just the cinnamon and nutmeg] and stir for 1 minute. Stir in the yogurt [I usually have so much pomegranate juice left over at this point that I don't need any more liquid to cook the lamb in. So I add the yogurt right at the end of the cooking] Cover the pan tightly and cook very gently for 30-40 minutes until the lamb is tender [It will also happily keep simmering away very gently for at least another hour if your guests turn up late. I speak from experience!] Check from time to time that the meat is not sticking and drying out too much. Add  little water if necessary. [At this point I add the yogurt]  Garnish with pomegranate seeds and chopped mint [or leave out the mint] and serve with rice [or it's nice with couscous]

I was a bit apprehensive about taking the ashes with me. I was flying via Bangkok, and both Thailand and Cambodia are very strict about hard drugs, so I felt uncomfortable taking a small jar of white powder with me! I took the cremation certificate with the ashes, so that I could try to explain them away if I got challenged, but in fact there wasn’t a problem at all.

An aside – at the Christmas Eve Gala Dinner I got talking to a couple from London who invited me to join them when they saw I was on my own. Over dinner, we got to discussing the state of the public toilets in the archaeological park, and how surprisingly clean they were. I said that I had been expecting much worse, and had taken the precaution of bringing a SheWee with me, in case the loos were totally disgusting. The man had never heard of one, and asked me what a SheWee was. I explained that it was an anatomically shaped funnel, designed to fix one of Nature’s major design flaws, and allow women to pee standing up without undressing. He looked fascinated, as well he might, and asked whether or not it worked. I had to confess that I hadn’t tried it – the loos on the trip had all been entirely adequate and I hadn’t needed it. So it was still unused in its case in my handbag, next to my husband’s ashes. They both looked at me in absolute horror at that, then burst out laughing!

I asked my guide for some advice on how to scatter the ashes in a culturally appropriate way. After all, I was a guest in a strange country and didn’t want to do anything that would greatly offend the locals. Somewhat to my surprise, he really entered into the spirit of the occasion, and gave me some very firm advice, nay instructions, on how to dispose of the ashes in accordance with local beliefs. They were to be scattered on the Monday (Boxing Day), as it was much more propitious to do so at the beginning of a week than the end. Furthermore, they needed to be scattered at the east side of a body of water, because east again was much more lucky than west. Finally, if at all possible they should be cast into water under a tree. I didn’t grasp why that was important, but having asked for his advice it would have been rude to question it.

Scattering the ashes at Angkor Wat

So on Monday we drove up to Angkor Wat, avoided the crowds of tourists entering the site from the south, and went to the much quieter east side of the moat surrounding the temple. There we found a suitable tree, and I cast Christopher’s ashes (or rather, just a few teaspoons of them) into the moat. I took the picture above just afterwards, and you can see what a lovely and tranquil spot it was.