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Pudding Club Pig-out

It’s hard to believe that another year has passed already, and it’s time for my now-annual girls’ weekend away at the Pudding Club. This year, two of the regulars had to cancel at the last minute, so rather than waste the places the others invited two of their friends to join the party. The newcomers had no idea what to expect, and watched rather wide-eyed (as I did the first year) as the annual ritual unfolded.

I was picked up from home at 09:15 on Saturday, and three of us drove together to Stratford, where we would meet the others for lunch. We were so busy gossiping that we missed our usual turn, and ended up entering the town by a completely different route, which led to some seat-of-the-pants navigating as we tried to find our way to the group’s regular car park by the Leisure Centre. Fortunately we found it eventually, and headed off to the riverside coffee-house that is the traditional first stop for a late breakfast of some sustaining coffee and toast. We were a bit disappointed to find that the toast is no longer free, as it has been previously, but it was still very welcome.

Then it was time for a some considerable Retail Therapy before lunch. I don’t usually go in for “shopping as recreation”, and given how much I managed to spend yesterday that’s probably just as well! I’ve now made my own annual tradition of buying a half-price cashmere jumper in the sales to wear to work, and was determined to do so again this time for now the third year running. I found one my size in a rather pleasant deep red colour – it’s probably very “last season”, but absolutely none of the techies and engineers that I work with will have any clue about that! I also spent an unconscionable amount in Lakeland – the one in Worcester has closed down, so the trip to Stratford is pretty much my only chance to get my fix of impossible-to-leave-behind kitchen and bathroom gadgets. I kept telling myself that I really needed a new colander and more sachets of moth-repellant. I also bought another individual pie dish to match the one I bought last year – it’s a very useful size for dinners-for-one and the current one therefore always seems to be in the dishwasher. But that was the “offer of the month” and therefore it would have been foolish to leave it behind……. I think they must see me coming!

The seven of us all met up (with a rather alarming number of shopping bags between us) at a pleasant pub/hotel for a very light lunch. Knowing what was coming in the evening, I confined myself to an omelette and a share of a portion of chips. The others also all had omelettes or sandwiches, and we tried to impress on the newbies the importance of not overdoing it at lunchtime. It was bitterly cold outside, and it was difficult to leave the warmth of the restaurant with its roaring fire. But I’d spotted an outdoor market opposite with a goodly sprinkling of craft stalls and farmers’ market stands, which clearly needed detailed investigating. I also found a reasonable bookshop, and a small shop apparently selling nothing but very expensive handcream. However, as I’m getting older, I’m increasingly understanding the benefits of a very strong handcream, so a tube of that also got added to my increasingly heavy bags of shopping.

When we were all finally shopped out, we met up to go back to the car park and continue on to the hotel. This was in Mickleton, an Olde Worlde tourist honeypot of a Cotswold village. All seven of us met up in the bar for pre-dinner drinks and a continuation of the good gossip we’d been enjoying over lunch. Then it was time to change before dinner. I very seldom wear a dress, but given the absolute necessity of not wearing anything tight around the waist, I decided that it was more practical than trousers in the circumstances. Naturally, wearing a dress meant I had to wear proper shoes rather than my habitual ankle boots. I’d packed my one and only pair of reasonably smart court shoes, but was horrified to find that during the intervening year since I last wore them, the glue holding the sole on had come unstuck. It was hanging off, and my left shoe was therefore flapping like a hungry crocodile! I didn’t have anything else to wear instead, but that did mean I had to be extra careful when going up for helpings of pudding – it would have been exceedingly unfortunate if I’d tripped and fallen into a vat of custard!

We all met up in one of the group’s bedrooms for wine before dinner – drunk out of our toothmugs! And then it was time to congregate in the bar for a complimentary glass of elderflower cordial and an introduction to the evening from our Master of Ceremonies. I’m almost an old hand by now, but our newbies’ eyes were standing out on stalks by this time! We had to make a choice of a very light main course – chicken, trout or veggie pasta, each little more than a starter, and were warned off eating too many of the boiled new potatoes that accompanied them.

Then it was time for the main attraction. Seven puddings were introduced to the room, one at a time. They vary each year, and this time the selection was: Sticky Toffee and Date Pudding, Passionfruit Roulade, Ginger Syrup Pudding, Squidgy Chocolate and Nut Pudding, Bread & Butter Pudding, Jam Roly Poly and Apple Crumble. I managed the first three fine (the first with both toffee sauce and custard, and the ginger sponge with lashings of custard ), then sat out a round to regroup and hope for a second wind. I then went for a helping of squidgy chocolate & nut pudding. That proved to be my undoing! It was extremely rich, particularly with the added chocolate sauce on top. I forced myself to finish it, as if I hadn’t the rest of the table would have been barred from going up for more helpings! But it was one pudding too many, and I should probably have played it safe with the apple crumble which would have been less filling. As it was I felt slightly sick, and had to walk up and down the corridor outside until I got my diaphragm back under control! I was a lightweight compared to rest of our party, several of whom managed all seven puddings!

I went to bed last night swearing that I wouldn’t want anything to eat this morning, but the lure of the breakfast buffet proved too much. Somehow I found space for a cooked breakfast and several slices of toast. Then it was time for the next part of the ritual, namely another helping of retail therapy in the pretty Cotwsold tourist trap village of Broadway. Getting to Broadway was a major problem though – all the roads seemed to be closed due to sewer works, the diversion signs were virtually nonexistent, and we ended up navigating using little more than blind instinct up over the top of the Cotwolds in thick fog. We got there in the end though, and collapsed into our regular café for some coffee and a toasted tea-cake in lieu of lunch, which we knew we wouldn’t be able to face. Then we wandered up and down the main street in Broadway, doing some window-shopping, and a fair amount of browsing.  I had pretty much had shopping overload by then, so my only additional purchase was from an outdoors shop, where I managed to find a small plastic shovel which I can put in the boot of my car on days when snow is threatening.

I was dropped off at home mid-afternoon, still absolutely stuffed and with a smile on my face. I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend, and I think all the others did too. The two newbies are both clearly hoping that they’ll get invited again next year! So while it was a shame that two of our regulars couldn’t make it, it was good to meet two new and interesting women, and to help introduce them to the joys of utter gluttony!

08 02 2015 Gillian Day out
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Going nowhere

I woke up this morning and could tell from the colour of the light coming in through the bedroom curtains that it had snowed overnight. However, I can never tell how bad the situation is until I put my glasses on and open the curtains, as a sprinkling of snow looks just the same to my blurry vision as several inches. Fortunately, it wasn’t much today, just a light dusting. It was well below zero though, and the car looked pretty solidly frozen.

At first I thought the car wasn’t as badly affected as it looked. The central locking worked fine, and I was able to open both the driver’s door and the one on the passenger side, which hasn’t always been the case. But when I tried to start the car to get the engine warmed up, the ignition flickered briefly into life then died completely. The battery was totally and utterly dead. There wasn’t even enough juice to use the central locking again to secure the car while I thought about what to do next. With hindsight, I’m not sure why I was so concerned about locking the car – it’s not as though anyone could have driven off in it without using jump leads!

I could see from the tracks in the snow on their drives that my neighbours had already gone out to work, so I was unlikely to be able to get a jump start from them. I do have RAC membership, but only Roadside and Recovery, not Home Start, so there was no point calling them out. So I decided the best thing to do was to call the mechanic at my regular garage who services the car each year. Mike said that he’d come out and get the car started, and get & fit a new battery for me, but although he said he’d be able to sort me out this morning, he couldn’t be sure exactly when he’d be able to get here. Which meant I had to take the morning off work at no notice, and dial in to a rather important project progress meeting which I was meant to be chairing.

It did make me reflect rather on the perils of being without a car in the middle of nowhere with minimal public transport. However, true to his word, Mike did turn up late morning and get the car started with some sort of battery-booster. I was then instructed to leave the car running for a good ten minutes before I drove to his garage at the far end of town, so that if I did accidentally stall the car on the way there would be enough charge in the battery to re-start it. I didn’t much like that implied slur on my driving skills – I don’t often stall it! But I wasn’t prepared to take the chance, so I did exactly as I was told!

I’ve now got a new battery fitted, which I suspect is the first time it’s been replaced since the car was new, eleven years ago. If so, that’s not bad going I suppose. It came completely out of the blue though – I’d seen no warning signs at all that the battery was on its last legs. But at least I shouldn’t have to worry about getting a flat battery for the rest of this winter. But I could have done without the hassle!

04 02 2015 icyjumbo car Comments (2) Permalink

The mouse man returneth

With all the cold weather lately, it’s hardly surprising that I’ve started to hear rustlings in the loft again. It’s been so cold and generally unpleasant outside that the mice have, understandably, been driven inside in search of shelter. Understandable, but not at all welcome! This time the noises haven’t been coming from the usual place – directly above my bed – but around the chimney breast in the living room. I was pretty sure there was still a reasonable amount of bait up there, as Martin the pest controller had put a double dose down to get rid of the persistent colonists back in November. Nonetheless, I don’t want the latest invaders to settle and breed, so I thought it was time to ask Martin to come over and top up the bait trays before the mice move to their favourite spot above my bedroom.

I called him mid-week, and was rather surprised when he picked up the phone and immediately said “Hello Gillian, shall I pop around on Friday?” You know you have a recurring mouse issue when your phone number is obviously programmed into the pest controller’s phone! It turned out to be even worse than that – Martin was actively expecting me to call him. I was chatting to him on Friday morning and he said that, for the past two years at least, he’s had call outs to both me and another of his clients virtually simultaneously. Often he sees us both on the same day, calling in at her place on the way back from mine. And if it’s not the same day, it’s always been in the same week. He was saying to his brother-in-law (Tim, my original pest controller) on Wednesday that it was really odd – he’d just been called out to Mrs So-and-So but hadn’t heard anything from Gillian. He put down the phone to Tim, and the next call was the one from me!

Anyway, he’s replenished the bait in the loft, and put some down in the garage for good measure. I’m pretty sure I’ve got some mice over-wintering in the woodpile in the corner of the garage. They can’t do a great deal of damage there, but I don’t want them using it as a staging post to invade the body of the house.

01 02 2015 icyjumbo house Comments Off on The mouse man returneth Permalink

Finally, a fully functioning fan

Way back last November I had a problem with the fan in my en-suite shower room. It had an intermittent short, and was turning itself on and off at random. My regular electrician was able to come out at short notice, diagnose the fault and disconnect the unit from the mains. Water had got into the electronics, and the fan unit needed to be completely replaced, but of course that’s not the sort of spare he carries around in his van. We agreed that he’d come back “before Christmas” to fit the replacement, and that I wouldn’t pay him until then.

Christmas came and went. The electrician was too busy to squeeze me in, I was too busy at work to chase him, and probably wouldn’t have been able to take a day off anyway. But when I got back home after my Christmas holiday, the lack of a functioning fan really started to bother me. I phoned the electrician’s number, and had a chat with his wife. She promised to nag him to phone me back and arrange a date to fix it. When nothing happened for a further few days, I started to wonder whether he actually wanted the job – it involves crawling around by torchlight in a very awkward tight space in my loft, avoiding the mouse poison and possible mouse corpses. However, I misjudged him – not only did he call me back, but he’d already bought the replacement fan unit. Today was the first day that we both could make, so I took the day off work.

We’d set the date several weeks ago, and agreed a “nine o’clock-ish” start. So when it got to nearly ten o’clock and there was still no sign of him, I was getting worried that he’d forgotten and I’d wasted a day’s leave. I should have had more faith! In my experience to date, he’s always turned up on the day agreed, but always at least an hour later than he said. The same was true today. He did eventually arrive, and spent a couple of hours up in the loft replacing the fan. It seems to be working fine now, so that’s one thing I can cross off my to-do list.

27 01 2015 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Finally, a fully functioning fan Permalink

Throwing gravy boats

I was back at Eastnor Pottery today for another session throwing pots on the wheel. Today I decided to have a go at making myself a gravy boat, which turned out to be trickier than I had anticipated. The classic shape for a gravy boat is of course oval, but the whole point of throwing is that you should be making pots that are circularly symmetric. I experimented a bit with how best to get the right shape, and converged on throwing a fairly wide and shallow bowl, then squashing it with my hands into a rough oval and forming a lip/spout. I made nine “variations on a theme” which I’ve left at the pottery to be dried to the leather-hard stage. When I next go back, in a few months time, I’ll make some handles, and down-select the best few of the jugs to turn and decorate.

25 01 2015 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Throwing gravy boats Permalink

It’s cold out there

It’s not got above freezing for several days. My garden and drive face almost due North, and the thin covering of snow that fell overnight on Friday hasn’t melted – in fact, it’s frozen solid.  At least I can tell that the insulation in my loft is doing its job, as my roof is still covered in snow. However, the roads are well-gritted and clear, and there’s absolutely no sign of frost in town, or indeed at work which is at the foot of the hills. Once again, I’m well above the snow line!

The Air Ambulance landing on top of British Camp

The Air Ambulance landing on top of British Camp

I went up on British Camp for a walk after work this afternoon. It was bitterly cold, and the north-facing slopes were still frozen solid. I had my walking boots on, but really needed crampons – it was so icy that I slipped on the slope at the centre back of the picture above, and slid down the path on my backside! As I did so, I looked up and saw the Air Ambulance circling overhead. Not for me, I hasten to add. But pretty much as soon as I’d got to my feet and moved away, it came in to land. Clearly, I wasn’t the only person to slip on the icy paths this afternoon. Someone had fallen down the earthworks and done themselves a mischief. An ambulance had been called and was sitting in the car park at the bottom of the hill, but it was too dangerous to get the casualty down there on a stretcher – hence the need for the air ambulance to evacuate them from the top of the hill.

I didn’t hang around to watch the rescue, as that seemed rather voyeuristic. Besides, I wanted to get back safely home before the sun went down and it got even icier and more dangerous. No doubt there will be a news item about it in the Malvern Gazette this week.

19 01 2015 Gillian Photo
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An unconventional use for a hot water bottle

Well, as expected it did snow last night. Not in Malvern itself, particularly. That was largely clear. However, there was a very clear snow line half way up the Hills, and I was well above it.

My drive wasn’t too bad. The worst bit was the steep slope directly off the road. That had about a centimetre of snow sitting on a thin layer of ice. It looked as if the snow had fallen in waves overnight, and the first batch had thawed slightly then refrozen when the second wave started. I used the snow shovel on the slope to clear it as much as I could, then opened a new bag of rock salt and scattered that liberally to help melt the black ice.

The bigger problem was the car. That had nearly 5cm of fairly loose snow covering it, with an underlying layer of rock-hard ice. I had to use a brush to sweep off as much snow as I could, leaving a Mohican on the roof where I couldn’t reach from either side! There was a de-icer spray bottle in the car to deal with the iced-up windows, but unfortunately the car doors were frozen solid so I couldn’t get at it! However, I learned that lesson a few winters back, and now keep a spare bottle of de-icer in the house for just such emergencies. That was fine for the windows. But the doors were frozen solid – the central locking seemed to work, but the door handle was frozen and immovable, and the door itself was frozen to the adjoining bodywork. No amount of heaving would make it budge. I did think of boiling a kettle and using that to melt the ice, but was worried about thermal shock cracking the windows. However, I then thought of my hot water bottle from last night. It was still warm to the touch, though not boiling hot – ideal. So I emptied the contents all over the car door handle and the edge where the door meets the rest of the bodywork. It did the job and I was finally able to get into the car, start the engine and retrieve the scraper to deal with the iced-up windows.

I got into work flustered but in time for a much-needed coffee before my meeting, to find that I’d got off lightly. At least once I got off my drive I had a straightforward drive in on gritted roads. One of my colleagues lives deeper in the countryside down minor roads that hadn’t been gritted. She made it as far as the first corner outside her house before skidding on black ice and sliding gently into a hedge. Fortunately no one was hurt, though she was horribly shaken.

I do hope it’s not going to be another hard winter. Snow might look beautiful, especially on top of the Hills. But it’s a right pain to deal with, even without taking into consideration the unwelcome flashbacks I get.

14 01 2015 icyjumbo car Comments Off on An unconventional use for a hot water bottle Permalink

First snow of winter

It’s snowing for the first time this winter. Not particularly hard, yet, but the forecast is for an accumulation of 5cm or more overnight. Considering it logically, that’s not a particularly big deal. The main road will be gritted overnight and ploughed if necessary, and I’ve put salt down on the steep slope onto the drive. I’ve got a fairly important meeting at work tomorrow, but I’ve warned the organiser that I’ll be late if I have to dig myself out, and if it’s too deep they can do without me absolutely fine for one day. The snow shovel is sitting in my porch ready to be deployed, and it’s forecasted to get much warmer tomorrow afternoon so it’s not as if I’ll be snowed in for any length of time.

However, despite all my preparations (including a freezer full of food, a new bag of rock salt and repairing the snow shovel) I’m still feeling extremely stressed about the fact that the snow has started settling on the ground. I reckon that’s a hangover from when Christopher was so ill five years ago, in the middle of the harshest winter for many years. I spent so much time (with the help of my extremely kind neighbours) shovelling snow off the drive day after day, so that there was always room to get an ambulance here – which was vital on several occasions. I’m sure I’m going to have nightmares about that again tonight. I just have to keep reminding myself that this is 2015, not 2010. There’s nobody critically ill in the house, and a few inches of snow are no longer a massive issue.

It’s odd what seemingly trivial things can set off an extremely unwelcome set of memories. Oh well. I shall do my best to admire the beauty of the freshly-fallen snow and try to ignore the flashbacks. And, after all, snow shovelling is very good exercise, should it come to that!

13 01 2015 icyjumbo status Comments Off on First snow of winter Permalink

Glass Slumping – the results

A few months ago I went on a glass fusing and slumping course in London. I finally picked up the resulting glassware when I visited my parents on the way back from my Christmas holiday. I was very pleased indeed with the results – all the pieces had come out much better than I had imagined or expected.

Six glass bowls waiting to be fired in the kiln

Six glass bowls waiting to be fired in the kiln

Above is what the glassware looked like last time I saw it, as it was sitting in the kiln waiting to be fired. It then had two firings, the first to fuse the various layers together, and a second to “slump” it into a mould to turn it into a bowl or vase.

Completed glass bowls

Completed glass bowls

The dark green piece with the white dots has been slumped over a cylindrical former and flopped into something not unlike a draped handkerchief – I think it’s rather effective. The bowls have all come out very well I think. The colours aren’t quite how I’d imagined them – they’re rather softer and more subtle. Overall, I was delighted with how the pieces all came out – to the extent that I might actually have to go back and have another go, now that I know what I’m doing!

09 01 2015 Gillian art
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Good on the Whole

I’ve had comments that it’s difficult to tell from my last few posts whether I had a good holiday, or a really crap one. Well, I think the overall balance is “Good on the whole”. I enjoyed myself and certainly shan’t be writing a long letter of “constructive criticism” to the holiday company – though I suspect from the conversations over dinner that I might be the only person who doesn’t! As my sister said – it was a classic, but for all the wrong reasons!

I certainly shan’t forget in a hurry being taken to see Roman slag at a landfill site on Christmas Day! (it was originally the site of an open-cast copper mine used from ancient times and since exhausted, but even so I’ve been to much more interesting old mines……). Nor shall I forget the dipsomaniac octogenarian with a hip flask who got extremely frisky after his third drink of the day, so wasn’t safe to sit next to on the coach from early afternoon onwards! Nor the rather scatty old woman with no sense of direction who got hopelessly lost on the three minute walk straight up the road from our hotel to where the coach picked us up in the mornings. We had to send one of the men after her to track her down – but it was ok in the end as quite a romance then proceeded to flourish between her and her rescuer, which gave the rest of us something else to gossip about!

I think the main reason I had a good time despite (or perhaps because of) all those factors was that I had robustly set my expectations in advance. I’d been to North Cyprus before, and knew that it was about 30 years behind the rest of Europe in terms of tourist infrastructure – there’s been virtually no investment since Partition in the seventies. But I knew that despite that, it was a charming, friendly and interesting place. I’d read up on the itinerary in a very comprehensive guide book, so knew what to expect from the sites. And I’ve been away at Christmas quite often enough to know that, if you travel in a group, it will be full of interesting and somewhat eccentric people, all with their own reasons for avoiding Christmas back home.

I had also appropriately set my expectations with regards to the hotel. There was a choice in the brochure – a “Special category” hotel (for which read 2* on a good day) right in the centre of Kyrenia, or a better appointed 3* “holiday village” in the foothills of the mountains outside the town. I’d chosen the 2* establishment, partly because it was quite a bit cheaper, partly because they were offering a “No Single supplement” deal which made it particularly good value, but mostly because of its location right in the centre of the old town, a two minute walk from the picturesque harbour and Kyrenia castle.

The hotel was a converted Ottoman mansion, with just nine rooms in a courtyard overlooking a small swimming pool – which would have been welcome in the summer, but none of us felt brave enough to go for a Boxing Day dip! Breakfast and dinner were taken in a sister establishment just around the corner, as it was too small to have its own restaurant. The food was entirely adequate, but nothing special, though I did enjoy the fresh fennel-seeded bread at breakfast. It was a bit noisy at night – the ancient old water heater hummed away, the bakery opposite started work very early, and of course the muezzin sang out the call to prayer from the mosque around the corner at a very anti-social hour in the morning. However, I always travel with a good pair of earplugs so the noise didn’t really bother me.

Only ten of our party were staying at the cheaper hotel – but we were all very glad that we’d made that choice. The rest of the group were at the holiday village which was quickly nicknamed the Gulag! It was pleasant enough, and certainly better-appointed than our hotel. But it was two miles out of town, up a very busy dual carriageway with no pavement. There was a shuttle-bus into Kyrenia once a day, but apart from that if you wanted to leave the establishment you had to call a taxi. That meant no wandering around the old town at night looking at the harbour or trying out interesting little bars, no calling in at the local bakery for coffee and a pastry to augment breakfast, and no exploring the fascinating local craft shop in a tower in the walls of the Old Town. Plus, they were in a minority amongst a much larger group of Brits travelling with another holiday company, who apparently were hogging the facilities. Altogether, we were much better off in the supposedly inferior establishment.

So all in all it was an enjoyable and certainly unforgettable holiday. I’d be happy to travel with the company again, accepting that you get what you pay for – so don’t expect 5* service for 2* prices.

06 01 2015 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Good on the Whole Permalink