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A Very Gluttonous Weekend

It’s a year since I went away with some friends from work to the Pudding Club, and I can’t really believe that a whole year has gone by since that extremely gluttonous experience! But the weekend has indeed come around again, and I spent it stuffing my face! The six other women on the trip have been going for years – indeed at least a decade for most of them – so have a well-honed routine for getting the most out of the weekend. It followed very much the same pattern as last year, but this time I knew what to expect.

Five of us were travelling from Malvern, so I was picked up from home at 09:20 on Saturday morning, and we all squeezed into one car for the trip to Stratford. The car was plenty big enough for the five of us, but there was a question as to how much additional shopping would fit in the boot! We went first to the usual cafe by the river in Stratford for coffee and toast – the latter didn’t appear on the menu, but if you know to ask then rounds of free toast and jam are provided. In fact, we cleared them out of toast, which was very tasty.

Then it was time for a quick hour’s shopping before lunch at the same rather nice pub that we went to last year. We were joined for lunch by another two of our party who live further away, and we all opted for a light lunch of sandwiches, soup or omelette, as we knew we’d be stuffing ourselves later. However, the chef got confused at how many portions of chips we wanted to share between us, and cooked twice as many as we’d asked for. So we got the extra portions for free, which was very good of them.

After a long and leisurely gossip over lunch, it was time for some more retail therapy. Fortunately, I was prepared this year, and brought my Christmas book token with me. I had a happy half hour in Waterstones choosing a couple of books, stocked up in Lakeland on a one-person-sized pie dish and baking tray, and bought myself a new cashmere sweater in the sales. Just before Christmas I had a run of three weeks when I stuck my elbow right though a sweater each week. I know I have sharp and bony elbows, but that was getting beyond a joke! Especially since each time I noticed it was mid-morning and I was at work, which meant I had to get through the rest of the day knowing that I was wearing a jumper that was only fit for weekends and gardening….. I thoroughly object to paying full price for cashmere, but you can generally pick up some good bargains in the sale, particularly if you’re not too fussy about wearing the latest, most fashionable colours. Which of course, I’m not! I bought a charcoal grey machine-washable sweater which will do fine for work – at least until I put my elbow through it……

Then we had to cram all of the shopping into the car boot, and drove into the depths of the Cotswolds, to a pleasant hotel in a small picturesque village which is the home of the Pudding Club. We had drinks in the bar, followed by wine (in tooth mugs!) in one of our rooms, before congregating in the lounge for the main event. Dinner consisted of a very small main course, little more than a starter, followed by seven puddings – and we were encouraged to sample as many of them as we could. The record apparently is 25 helpings, but none of our party got anywhere near that! The puddings this time were different from a year ago and were: Passionfruit Charlotte, Syrup Sponge, Butterscotch Sponge, Banana and Cinnamon, Very Chocolate, Spotted Dick and Rhubarb Crumble.

I managed the first four, starting with passionfruit charlotte, which was absolutely delicious. So good in fact, that even though it kept repeating on me all evening, the burps tasted nearly as good mid-way through the syrup sponge as it did first time around! However, word came down the table that, good as the passionfruit was, the butterscotch pudding was even better. “Orgasmic” in fact, according to the woman (not one of our group) at the end of our table, which caused our party to give it a thorough testing. It wasn’t quite a “When Harry Met Sally” moment, but it was very good indeed, and in fact was the overwhelming winner by popular vote at the end of the evening.

We ate so much last night that it seemed highly unlikely we’d ever want to eat again. But that was before the prospect of a full cooked breakfast this morning, which we all managed to do full justice to! Then it was off to the village of Broadway for some more shopping and a coffee, none of us being able to face a proper lunch. It started raining again, so we set off home – and none too soon. The floods in the Severn Valley are very severe again after weeks of relentless rain, and somehow we had to cross the river to get back to Malvern. The Upton bridge was closed due to the floods – obviously the new flood defences weren’t quite comprehensive enough – so we had to detour via Worcester. However, the city-centre bridge was also closed due to flooding, so all the traffic was piling over the New Bridge, leading to major congestion. At least there was no standing water on the roads, even at Powick which flooded so badly in 2007, so it looks as if the new flood defences there are holding. It was quite a detour to get home, but at least once we were this side of the river there were no more problems.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable, and exceeding gluttonous weekend!

09 02 2014 icyjumbo Day out
food Comments (4) Permalink

The Big Community Switch

It seems to be accepted advice that one should switch electricity suppliers every few years to make sure you get the best value for money. Indeed, I’ve read in the Money pages of the Sunday papers that if you don’t switch regularly, you’re very likely to be paying well over the odds. But it all seems such a huge hassle, and I’ve had limited energy for so long now that that was just one challenge too many. We’ve always been with npower, and I remember that one of the things that Christopher did when he was first made redundant was to move us onto a better tariff (though still with npower) to try to save us some money. Since then, though, I’ve been content to let matters lie.

However, I’ve been getting increasingly narked with npower. Their customer service really is atrocious. They were the company that insisted on sending bills to “the executors of the late Mr Booth” for a full year after he died, until I got extremely cross indeed with them. They’ve changed my meter without asking or even informing me (technically trespass as they had to access my land?) and seem totally incapable of getting a bill out on time. Plus of course the prices keep going up.

Last autumn, I read in the local newspaper about the “Big Community Switch”, organised by Malvern Hills District Council together with a number of other local councils across the country. Basically, they tried to get as many people as possible to sign up, then used that combined purchasing power in a Reverse Auction with a range of utility suppliers to try to get a better deal. I’m not actually within the Malvern Hills council jurisdiction, as I’m over the border in Herefordshire, but the small print basically said “the more, the merrier”. There was absolutely no obligation to take up any quote that was offered, so there was nothing to lose, and possibly something to gain. I’m sure I could have got similar results using uswitch or a similar comparison web site, but somehow this felt easier. And it was endorsed by a range of local councils, which made me feel more confident.

The deal I was offered promises to save me well over £100 per year, which is well worth having, so I signed up. It’s taken about two months for the switch to happen, but as of 1st February I am no longer an npower customer, and the lights have stayed on, so that’s a good sign. I’ve just had my final bill from them – or at least I’m hoping it is. I shall be keeping a very close eye on my bank statements to make sure that they’re not stealing my money! I now need to work out how to redeem the £12 or so of mine that I’d overpaid – without spending as much again on a premium rate phone line to “customer services”.

The jury’s out on how much money I’ll actually save, or whether customer service will actually improve. I’m sure that all the main electricity suppliers are as bad as each other in many ways. But having switched once, I’ll be less hesitant about doing so again in a year or so’s time, should I be unhappy with the price or service.

04 02 2014 icyjumbo house Comments (3) Permalink

Hobnail boots

Mice clog-dancing in the loft seems very loud. But two men in heavy working boots clambering about on the roof is even louder! The builders came around yesterday morning and found what they think caused the leak in the roof above the spare bedroom – two cracked tiles. They’ve replaced those, and for good measure repointed the tiles on the hip of the roof. That had to be done with quick-drying cement in between the rain-showers, and they didn’t quite get it all done before the heavens opened for a prolonged downpour. So they’ll be back on Monday to finish the job and make good any rain damage on the work they did yesterday.

While they were here with their long ladder, I asked them to replace the bulb in my newly repaired security light at the apex of the garage. It stopped working about two weeks ago and I don’t have a ladder long enough to reach it. They were very happy to oblige, and changed the bulb – but it still doesn’t work. I shall have to phone the electrician and complain that he’s done a substandard job……

I’ll also have to phone my decorator and ask him to redecorate the spare bedroom ceiling. Plus there’s a patch of peeling wallpaper in my bedroom that needs replacing, and the bathroom ceiling needs another coat of paint. I probably could do all that myself, but I really don’t want to.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Just when I think I’m on top of the house maintenance, something else needs doing. It really is like painting the Forth Bridge!

02 02 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Hobnail boots Permalink

Aversion Therapy?

I used to really enjoy knitting. I was pretty good at it, and found it very relaxing after a hard day at work. But I haven’t done any knitting at all for the past three and a half years. I told myself that was because it was giving me a nasty case of RSI in my wrist, and it was too physically painful to keep on knitting. But that was only part of the story.

In fact, what I think has really been going on is that I’ve been thoroughly put off knitting by some really nasty mental associations. When Christopher was in the hospice, I spent many hours sitting by his bedside, knitting the most complicated lace-patterned pullover that I could find. If I was concentrating really hard on counting stitches and following the pattern, then I could keep my mind from dwelling on what was happening. I finished knitting the sweater the day after he died, but couldn’t bring myself to finish sewing the pieces together, let alone wear it. It went straight into the recycling at the local tip, which was a real shame, but the only thing I could bear to do at the time.

Since then I’ve been frankly scared to take up my knitting again, because I didn’t want to be reminded of the worst two weeks of my life, nor deal with all the distressing feelings I’ve been burying. But at some point you just have to face up to your fears and get on with it, otherwise you get stuck avoiding things. And that’s not healthy. So I decided to use the New Year as a new start, and knit something. Not a lacy sweater – that would have been asking for trouble, and I’m not feeling that strong yet. And preferably something that needs the minimum of sewing up once I’ve knitted the constituent pieces – let’s deal with laying one ghost at a time.

So I went into the local wool shop in Malvern to see what they had to offer. In the window was just what I was looking for – an icelandic-style sweater, knitted in the round without any seams. Normally you would separately knit the back, front and two sleeves of a sweater, then sew them together. But with the “seamless” style, you make the body as one tube, the sleeves as two tubes, then knit them together across the shoulders, funnelling up to the neckline. I remember knitting a sweater that way when I was a teenager, and being very impressed by the cleverness of the construction, and the avoidance of the tedious sewing-up stage. I haven’t seen any patterns knitted that way for years – I think that knitting fashions must have moved on, so I was really pleased to see an example. But when I told the shop assistant that I wanted to knit a copy of the sweater in the window, I was in for a big disappointment. Firstly, that particular pattern was out of print, so they couldn’t sell me a copy. Worse, they didn’t even have any patterns on sale at all that were knitted in that particular style. And while I used to be a very confident knitter, I’m not prepared to mess around with adapting a pattern after several years away.

I was really cross. Why put a sweater in the window of a wool shop if you’re not prepared to sell customers the pattern? What’s the point? I nearly walked out in a huff at that point, but that wouldn’t have got me any closer to my goal of taking up knitting again. So I spent an age looking through the pattern books for something they would be prepared to sell me, that would be interesting to knit, have the minimum of sewing-up involved, and would be as different as possible from a lacy pullover. I settled on a pair of bed-socks, in an interesting variegated yarn, designed by one of my favourite knitwear designers, Kaffe Fasett. I get really cold feet at night, so bed-socks would be very useful. The pattern is complicated enough to keep me interested (turning the heel on a sock is quite a fiddle) but not so difficult as to be off-putting. And it’s a small enough project that I can finish it in a few weeks, without investing a huge amount of time, energy and money in something that I wasn’t entirely sure I’d enjoy.

28 01 2014 icyjumbo status Comments Off on Aversion Therapy? Permalink

Another day at the pottery

I went back to Eastnor Pottery again today to do some throwing. I didn’t want to make anything in particular – I’ve got plenty of plates, bowls and mugs already, but I did want to have a play at throwing different vase shapes.

When I was in Greece over Christmas, I visited several museums with large collections of ancient pots. Whereas once I would have looked solely at the decoration on them, now I find that I look at them with a different eye, and find myself wondering how on earth the ancient potters made them. There are several possible different techniques they could have used, and I wondered how much was straightforward throwing, and how much was done using more advanced techniques. So I decided to spend the morning throwing some quite contorted shapes, to see where the limits were. Or at least, my limits – the ancient potters were clearly much more skilled than I am, and could make a lump of clay do things that I would struggle with.

That was fun. I threw nine vessels in all, then put several of them on the reclaim pile. I’ve kept the less wobbly ones for next time, when I’ll turn them to neaten them up. I’m not currently planning on decorating, firing or glazing them – I’ll probably cut them in half to check the consistency of my throwing, then put them in the reclaim bucket. I don’t really need to give house room to slightly wobbly Grecian-style urns. The enjoyment lies in making them, and exploring the limits of my throwing, not necessarily in keeping the results.

25 01 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Another day at the pottery Permalink

I’ll probably regret saying this…..

….. But I haven’t heard anything from the mice for nearly a week. I’m hopeful that the ultrasonic rodent repellers might actually be making a difference!

UPDATE I did speak too soon! There was definitely a mouse around again last night, above my bed, at around half past midnight. Though to be fair, it did appear to be tip-toeing rather than clog-dancing, which I suppose is an improvement. I’m at a loss to know what more to do – there’s plenty of bait up there, so no point calling out Tim to replenish it.

19 01 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on I’ll probably regret saying this….. Permalink

Causing Chaos and Consternation

I have been sleeping badly for ages, and would really like to do something about it without resorting to sleeping pills – it would be much better to fix the underlying problem if possible, than to resort to drugging myself. I noticed that I slept much better in Greece than I’m used to. Of course, that may have had something to do with walking over rough ground around archaeological sites for up to four hours a day, plus huge amounts of food and drink! But I also slept pretty well at my parents at New Year. It seemed to me when I got home that my bed was distinctly uncomfortable compared to the ones on holiday and at my parents. I looked more closely, and the mattress has a distinct sag in it, which doesn’t help. We bought the bed when we got married, over twenty years ago, and replaced the mattress about ten years ago. Clearly it’s now getting to the end of its life, so I decided that I’d buy a new bed in the January Sales.

There are two bed shops in Malvern. One is an offshoot of the local family-run furniture business, who pride themselves on customer service, and whom I’ve used extensively in the past. The other is fairly new in Malvern, but clearly wants to provide some serious competition. I’ve spent several hours in both of them trying out a range of beds and mattresses. I was surprised at how little there was on the market that met my requirements, which I didn’t think were that unusual or exacting!

Firstly, I wanted a king-size wooden bed frame, not a divan. Shouldn’t be too difficult, you’d have thought. And of course I want to be able to sit up in bed and read or have a cup of tea. But most of the wooden bed frames I was shown had headboards with fancy wooden detailing on them that dug into my shoulder blades when I sat up! They were extremely uncomfortable! I’m a big believer in “form follows function”. I don’t dislike ornamentation in itself, but I do object strongly when it detracts from the basic function of something. As far as I’m concerned, many if not most of the wooden beds I was shown failed the basic criterion of being “fit for purpose” and should never have been allowed to reach the market! Funnily enough, it wasn’t a subject that seemed to have entered the heads of the salespeople at either of the bed shops, and they looked surprised when I pointed out how uncomfortable some of their beds were to sit up in.

The next contentious point was the mattress. There were plenty on show at both shops, and I lay on many of them. My key requirement was that it should not need turning head-over-heels, as I simply can’t manage that on my own. In fact, I’m sure that is why my current mattress has got so uncomfortable – it’s far too heavy for me to manipulate, so it hasn’t been turned since before Chris died. But even the modern mattresses which don’t need turning upside-down do need rotating top-to-bottom on a regular basis, to promote even wear and to reduce the likelihood of saggy bits. So I insisted on attempting to single-handedly turn each of the candidate mattresses in both shops, telling the salesmen only to intervene and help if it looked as if I was going to break something. I’m not sure they’d ever been asked that before, as again they looked very surprised. But there really is no point in them selling me something that I can’t manipulate on my own, and indeed that test ruled out many of the mattresses on my short-list. In fact, some were so heavy that I’m not sure I’d have been able to lift them easily even far enough to change the sheets, and they were definitely unsuitable on that basis.

So far I’d got down to a short-list of two beds that were comfortable to sit up in, and two mattresses that were comfortable to lie on but also light enough to manipulate, one from each shop. The two shops were running neck-and-neck, with very little difference in their sale prices. My next requirement was on delivery of the new bed and removal of the old one. That is the main reason why I want to buy locally, rather than trying something out for comfort and then buying it cheaper online. There is simply no way I could fit my current king-sized bed and mattress into my little Mini to take it to the tip. It was absolutely essential that the shop was prepared not only to deliver the new bed but also to take away the old one. And that is where I finally found a clear difference between the two. Both offered that service, but the newer shop required the old bed to be disassembled first before they would touch it, whereas the family-run firm were happy to dismantle it for me. That makes a big difference. If I can’t even lift the mattress on my current bed, I’d be likely to do myself a real mischief if I tried to take the whole thing to pieces. I distinctly remember that being a two-person job when we moved house, and it would be asking for trouble to try it on my own.

So I’ve gone with the family-run company, on the basis of their superior customer service, and the fact that I’ve found them very reliable in the past. It will take several weeks for the bed to be delivered, but I hope that it will then make a difference to the quality and quantity of my sleep.

13 01 2014 icyjumbo house
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Happy Birthday Christopher?

Today would have been Christopher’s fiftieth birthday. We only really celebrate decades in our family, so I am sure that we would have had fun commemorating this milestone, probably involving both friends and a very good meal somewhere.

More than that, given the difference in age between us, I am now older than he ever was. That’s a weird and uncomfortable feeling, and I really don’t like it. I still find it exceedingly sad that he’s not here. But it was not to be.

Oh well.

12 01 2014 icyjumbo status Comments (2) Permalink

A New Front in the War on Mice

I was talking to my next-door neighbour last weekend, and she said how much she was enjoying the ongoing saga of my continuing battles with the mice. When she’d stopped laughing, she sympathised, and said that they had similar problems with mice in the attic. She asked whether I’d tried ultrasonic rodent repellers, as they were using one with some success.

I remember that several years ago, Christopher did discuss ultrasonic devices with Tim, our regular rodent-killer, and he was somewhat dismissive. Apparently, the mice get habituated to the sound, so they only work in the short term. Also, my neighbours are using a mains-powered ultrasonic repeller, and I don’t have sockets conveniently placed in my loft. However, I’m getting desperate enough to want to try something else, as there’s tons of poisoned bait up in the loft, and yet I’m still hearing scrabbling sounds every night at 11o’clock pretty much on the dot, and again between 3am and 4am. I looked on-line, and found some reasonably-priced battery-operated ultrasonic rodent repellers, so ordered a couple.

They arrived during the week, so I thought I’d better try to deploy them this weekend. I don’t like going up into the loft – it’s cramped and claustrophobic, smells of mice, and isn’t boarded, so you have to be really careful to only step on the rafters, otherwise you could easily put a foot through the ceiling. Since I know my mother is reading this, I’d better say that I did take the precaution of putting my mobile phone in my pocket along with the torch, and unlocking the back door so that rescuers could get in if disaster struck and I needed to call for help – though whether I’d get a phone signal up there is another question!

It was tricky to find somewhere to put the devices. I didn’t want to put them right next to the bait, as if the critters do get in and hang around, I want them to take the bait not get frightened away from it. But there also is the issue that access around my loft is very difficult – it’s in three separate bits, and I’m not prepared to crawl between them. And it’s very cluttered, with old Victorian water tanks, and loads of stuff that I think Chris must have put up there when we moved in – and the ultrasonics work less well in a cluttered environment. I finally came to a compromise and put the devices in place. I shall now wait and see whether there is any discernible effect.

11 01 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on A New Front in the War on Mice Permalink

Dodgy Damp Patch

It’s been pouring with rain, seemingly for weeks. I’m so glad that I got the garden sorted two years ago, as at least I don’t have to worry about getting home after a downpour and finding the terraces in a muddy heap in my kitchen! And I’m far enough up the Malvern Hills that if I ever got flooded, I’d be able to hitch a lift from a latter-day Noah on a passing ark. But I haven’t managed to escape the consequences of the biblical-level deluges we’ve been having recently. There is a highly suspicious-looking damp patch on the ceiling of my spare room. I think it’s probably the case that a tile has slipped. At least, I hope it’s no more serious than that. But my reliable builder is so busy at the moment with much more serious problems (there are people in Worcester and the surrounding villages coping with flooding) that it’s going to take me a while to get to the top of his priority list. I’m hoping that it’s nothing serious, and that a week or so’s delay won’t be a problem. But if the damp patch starts spreading I will have to consider getting someone else in to have a look at it. And the ceiling is clearly going to need repainting once the leak has been fixed. Sigh. More expense.

08 01 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Dodgy Damp Patch Permalink