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One thing after another

It’s been one of those days today. I must have run over a nail sometime on the way to or from work yesterday, without noticing, with the result that I had a flat tyre this morning. Fortunately it was only a slow puncture, and the nail was still stuck in situ, so with the help of a friend I was able to pump the tyre back up to a safe drivable pressure and get into work only a bit later than usual. After dealing with the latest crisis on the bid, I took myself off to ETB on the industrial estate for them to replace the tyre. I was very relieved when they said that they would be able to repair the hole in the (fairly new) tyre and that I didn’t need to replace it. And they only charged me £20 which is a whole lot better than a new tyre would have cost.

However, the money I saved on that has already been spent. I’ve got builders in at the moment mending the porch roof which leaks every time it rains. The foreman was inspecting the job at lunchtime, in a downpour, and noticed that one of my drainpipes wasn’t working properly, and that water was splashing onto the wall of the house. I did in fact know that the gutter was overflowing, and had been ignoring it, but he explained to me quite forcibly that it needed fixing, as otherwise I’d ultimately get penetrating damp in my living room, and that would be a major (and expensive) problem. So I agreed that they should just get on with it, and got home from the garage to find all the man-hole covers in my drive open. One of the builders had his arm shoulder-deep into a land-drain, in the pouring rain, excavating a large pile of leaf-mould and gravel. It’s still blocked, around a bend from where he could reach easily, so he’ll be back tomorrow with more tools to have another go at the job.

I’ve also agreed that, since the builders will be here tomorrow doing that and finishing the rebuild of the porch, they should also spend some time up on the roof, fixing slipping and shaled tiles, and doing some “gardening” up there. I’m not so bothered about the moss that is growing on the roof, though apparently it’s not very good for the tiles, but there are several saplings taken root in the ridge tiles which need to be removed.

I’m about to go and put a bottle of white wine in the fridge to chill. After the day’s hassles I could do with a drink with my dinner to help me unwind!

17 08 2012 icyjumbo car
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Medicinal chocolate cake

I wandered over to the work’s canteen mid-morning, looking for a sugar-hit to get me through the morning. I swear the canteen manager has got the measure of me, because there were some delicious-looking slices of freshly-baked chocolate cake on display which I simply couldn’t walk past! For medicinal purposes only of course! And it tasted just as good as it looked, so the morning’s bid-writing went better than I had anticipated…… I dread to think what the combination of significant anniversaries and work-related stress is doing to my waistline, but it’s hardly a priority right now. If I want to comfort-eat then I’ll damn well do so!

15 08 2012 icyjumbo status Comments Off on Medicinal chocolate cake Permalink

Coffee, chocolate and paracetamol

I got through last week ok and have been back at work since Thursday, dealing with the major bid which has very compressed timescales. It would be pretty stressful anyway, quite apart from the added complication of the time of the year. I’m really tired and am keeping going with the unholy trinity of coffee, paracetamol and chocolate. I was in the canteen at lunch time getting a black americano (pretty much the closest one can get to intravenous caffeine!) and a bar of chocolate. The canteen manager said that it was a worrying sign that I needed emergency chocolate on a Monday, and that didn’t bode well for the rest of the week! It should certainly help the canteen’s profits though……

13 08 2012 icyjumbo status Comments Off on Coffee, chocolate and paracetamol Permalink

Chedworth Roman Villa

Yesterday was the second anniversary of Christopher’s death, and I’m feeling an awful lot better than I did this time last year. However, I knew I would still be feeling somewhat wobbly, so I have consigned the bid into the capable hands of two of my colleagues and taken a few days off work. Mind you, I’m so stressed out about the bid, as well as everything else, that I’ve not been able to relax and stop worrying about it. My colleagues have been sending me discreet texts during the day telling me how it’s going, and I’ve had a full debrief every afternoon which has been a big help.

My sister has been staying  to keep me company, and we decided to go out yesterday to visit a National Trust site. I read on Colin’s blog that Chedworth Roman Villa has some newly-displayed mosaics, so we went to see for ourselves. I have been there before, a few times in fact, with Christopher, but that was several years ago. The site has had a lot of investment since then from Lottery funding, including a new building over the west wing of the villa, so that you can now clearly see the dining room, bath house and connecting corridor, with some rather fine mosaics. Fine that is by British standards – I’ve seen much better in Italy and North Africa, and Chedworth is decidedly provincial compared to some of those – but colourful and well worth seeing none the less.

Winter from the Four Seasons mosaic

There was quite al arge team of conservators, at least some of them apparently students from Durham University (judging by their sweatshirts) who were cleaning, repairing, and recording the mosaics, in full view of lots of inquisitive punters. There were also some costumed re-enactors explaining the Roman way of life to anyone who would listen.  I think my favourite  mosaic was the “Four Seasons” in the dining room. This is “Winter” – the man is wearing a hooded cloak, the birrus britannicus, which was specially designed to cope with the cold British climate. He’s holding a hare which he has presumably just caught, which is going to form his dinner. The villa was very well appointed with hypocaust heating systems, and two separate heated bath houses, so the owners were well prepared to cope with harsh Cotswold winters! The villa was clearly the home of someone very rich who spared no expense on his creature comforts. There was lots of imported Samian ware and foodstuffs from all over the Roman Empire – it was a case of how the other half lives, only 1700 years ago!  We had a very tasty, if somewhat over-priced, lunch in the National Trust tea-room (also new since last time I was there), then came home and collapsed in front of the Olympics on the TV.

08 08 2012 Gillian Day out Comments (2) Permalink

Every single time

My sister has come to stay for a few days to keep me company over the anniversary of Christopher’s death. Rather than simply sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves,  or vegetating in front of the Olympics on the TV, I thought we actually ought to do something positive. So I booked us an early dinner at the theatre restaurant on Monday night, followed by tickets to see this week’s play. It starred Jenny Seagrove and Finty Williams who is Judi Dench’s daughter, so I thought that it ought to be quite a good production.

The show was Volcano, a “new” play by Noël Coward. New that is, in the sense of never having been performed in his lifetime, and having apparently been fairly recently rediscovered. I generally like Coward plays – the characters aren’t necessarily particularly pleasant, but they are usually witty and often distinctly funny. The publicity material said that it was about marital shenanigans on a tropical island, based on the life of Coward himself and his friend Ian Fleming, the James Bond author. Judging by all the other Coward plays I’ve seen, I also thought that the subject matter was likely to be quite light and not too painful for the rather dodgy time I’m having at the moment.

How wrong I was! The main character was a widow of several years standing who went on and on about how much she still missed her husband. Thanks for that – just what I needed. Then the volcano started erupting and the only happily married couple started arguing about whether the wife should evacuate to look after their children. She wanted to stay with her husband and die with him because she said she wouldn’t be able to live without him. I thought to myself  “Yes you would, it’s amazing what you can do if you have to.”  It got to the point that my sister and I just kept rolling our eyes at each other as the subject matter of the play harped more and more on death. Fortunately after a while I found the situation funny rather than painful. J said afterwards that it seems as if  every single time I go to the theatre, the play focuses on death, widowhood, cancer, grief and so on. I know they make good dramatic subjects, but surely there are other things one can write a play about?

07 08 2012 Gillian Day out Comments Off on Every single time Permalink

Summer Bidding

My main customer works to an annual budgeting cycle, which means that the same activities seem to happen at roughly the same time every year. Two years ago I was working on a major bid, at the same time as Christopher was dying in the hospice. I would go into work in the morning, sort out some of the previous day’s issues, then dash to the hospice in the afternoon to spend some time with him.

This time last year I was bidding for a follow on to the same project, with the same people. That was tough, although it did at least give me something to concentrate on and throw my energies into around the anniversary of his death.

Guess what is going on this year? That’s right, another major bid. It’s not quite a follow-on to last year, but is with many of the same people. At least the key team members know that this is a difficult time of the year for me, and they are all rallying round to support me and help me through it. My colleagues in the office are also being very tolerant of the fact that I have a short fuse at the moment. I normally try to watch my language when I’m in an open plan office, but I’m so stressed at the moment that it’s difficult. My computer has been very flaky recently and it hasn’t taken much provocation from Bill Gates to get me to break out in fluent Anglo-Saxon! I’ll be glad when this week is over, the bid is under control, and the anniversary is past for another year.

06 08 2012 icyjumbo status Comments (2) Permalink

Mean time between tradesmen

It seems to have been an ongoing theme all year that I’ve been unable to last more than about ten days between tradesmen visiting to fix something on or in the house. I thought I’d maybe broken that trend, as I’ve not had a single tradesman here since the visit from Tim the pest controller over a month ago. But then today I had two visiting in one day, so I reckon that my Mean Time Between Tradesmen is still close to its long term average!

The first visit of the day in fact started before I even got up. Martin, the window-cleaner, made an early start on washing down and scrubbing clean all of the exterior woodwork, and cleaning out my gutters while he was up there. The whole lot had got grubby with green mould, and was looking distinctly shabby. He had originally planned to do the job several months ago,  but the weather has been so atrocious that we have kept postponing it. I left him cleaning the soffit boards and barge boards above the living room when I went to work, and when I came home the house looked like it had been newly painted, there was such a striking difference.

The second visit was late this afternoon. For many months now my porch roof has been leaking every time it rains – so that means it’s pretty much a daily occurrence – and I finally decided I need to do something about it. It’s not so much that a leaky porch is a problem in itself, but I can see that some of the woodwork is rotting as a result, and I really don’t want the rot to spread to the rafters on the adjoining roof over my living room, as that would be very expensive.  Of course, the trouble with inviting a joiner round to suck his teeth over a job is that he sees other things that also need fixing – such as that the porch door is hanging at an angle, the porch itself is coming away from the house, and the whole thing needs stabilising and the door re-hanging.

While he was here, I also asked him to quote for replacing the kitchen window. I’ve disliked that window ever since we moved in here. It’s the only window in the house which is aluminium rather than wood, the double glazing seal has blown so there is condensation between the panes, and (which is the most annoying) the locks and fittings are positioned so that I have to stand on a chair to open the casements. I asked the joiner to quote for a double-glazed hardwood window with fixings low enough that I can reach them by stretching over the sink without standing on a chair.

I’ll have to wait and see whether I can afford both the porch and a new window, though the porch is the higher priority if it comes to a choice. I can feel some more overtime coming on to pay for it all!

01 08 2012 Gillian house Comments Off on Mean time between tradesmen Permalink

Rocking all over the world

It was very hot and rather muggy yesterday, so I had all the windows open to try to catch a breeze through the house. All through the evening I kept hearing snatches of loud rock music, drowning out the commentary on the Olympics on the TV. I thought that maybe one of my neighbours was having a loud party, but it’s very unlike them not to have mentioned it, as they are a very considerate bunch.

I wanted to have an early night, partly because I’m very tired from not sleeping well at the moment, but mostly because I’d stayed up far too late on Friday night to watch the Olympics Opening Ceremony. But the music seemed louder than ever, and it was clear that the only way I’d get an early night was if I closed all the windows and stifled in the heat. I went out into the garden to see if I could tell which house it was coming from, and was hit by a huge blast of Rocking all over the World, seemingly coming from the entire hill to the west of me. Then I realised what was going on. Status Quo were playing live at the Eastnor Castle Deerpark, and clearly had their amp turned up to at least 11, if not higher!

Clearly, sleep was going to be impossible until they had finished their set, so I stayed out in the garden and listened to the rest of the concert. There was certainly no need to spend £35 on a ticket when the wind was coming from the west!

29 07 2012 icyjumbo house
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Fluffy pancakes

When Chris was alive, he made a big thing of cooking pancakes and maple syrup for our breakfast every Sunday morning. I think it harked back to when we got married in Upstate New York, where pancakes & maple syrup (and/or waffles and maple syrup) loomed large at every breakfast, and our whole wedding party really pigged out. In fact, it was when eating the pancakes nearly three years ago that he first noticed that he was having trouble swallowing, which was the first indication we had of the oesophageal cancer.

I really enjoyed the pancakes, and since he died I’ve tried to keep up the tradition. However, I’ve simply not felt up to cooking first thing on a Sunday morning, so I’ve been making do with ready-made buttermilk pancakes from Waitrose, which just pop in the toaster. They’re not bad, but just aren’t in the same league as the ones that Chris used to make.

I realised quite what I was missing when J & P were here the other weekend. They (well, mostly J) cooked a batch of fresh pancakes for us all on the Sunday morning, and they were particularly tasty. They were so much lighter and fluffier than standard pancakes, because they’re made with beaten egg whites, almost like a soufflé.  I remembered that we had given J the recipe in the first place, and I reckoned that my cooking skills have probably improved enough over the last two years that I ought to be up to dealing with folding in egg whites by now.  So I went searching for the recipe, and on Sunday morning I had a go. They were delicious – really light and fluffy, and extremely moreish. And not as difficult to make as I had expected.

Here is the recipe for the fluffiest pancakes you can imagine. J did four egg’s worth for the three of us, and it was really slightly too much – we polished them all off, but felt guilty. I did one egg’s worth (and quartered all the other ingredients) on Sunday, and can report that the recipe scales down well for just one person.

Fluffy pancakes – for three hungry people or four less greedy ones!

  • 150ml milk
  • 4 eggs, separated
  • 150g self raising flour
  • butter or oil for cooking
  • maple syrup for serving

Whisk together the milk and egg yolks in quite a large bowl. Sift the flour into the egg mixture and gently whisk it together to make a smooth batter.  In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Fold the egg whites carefully into the batter with a large spoon.

Now comes the really difficult bit – cover the bowl and leave the batter in the fridge for an hour to rest. I’m not actually sure this bit of the recipe is achievable – particularly not at breakfast time! If Chris got up before me he would make the batter then chill it until I finally emerged blinking. But I’m not going to hang around getting hungry on a Sunday morning. The batter got about half an hour in the fridge and then I couldn’t wait any longer.

When you’ve given up waiting for the batter to rest, put the oven on low, and put in a serving dish and a jug of maple syrup to warm up. Heat a non-stick frying pan and grease it lightly with butter or oil. Drop in a ladleful of batter to make a pancake about 7-8cm across. You should be able to do a few at a time in the pan.  Cook for a few minutes on each side over a medium heat until golden brown. Don’t even think about trying to toss them – they are far too delicate. Use a spatula to gently turn them over.  Some of mine went horribly misshapen when I tried to turn them over, but they still tasted just as I remembered them. Put them in the oven to keep warm while you do the rest of the batch.

Serve with warmed maple syrup and, if you’re feeling particularly decadent, strawberries. Yum!

24 07 2012 Gillian recipe Comments (2) Permalink

Cancelling English Heritage membership

The year after we got married, Christopher and I went on holiday via York to Hadrian’s Wall, and came back home via the Scottish Borders and the Lake District. We didn’t have a lot of money, as buying and furnishing our flat was taking up all our cash, so my parents very kindly gave us some spending money. We spent some of that on a good dinner in York (he always did like his food!), and some on entrance fees to various abbeys, castles and forts. After a few days, we worked out that it would be much more cost effective to spend the rest of the holiday money on buying a joint membership of English Heritage, so that we could get in everywhere free.

We kept up an annual English Heritage membership thereafter. It was great when I was learning to drive, as there are lots of places in their custody within about an hour of here – I would drive us somewhere on a Sunday morning, we’d have a picnic and potter round a castle, Roman ruin, or long barrow, then Chris would drive us home. He always refused to join the National Trust, and in fact used to get quite het up when visiting their stately homes, muttering about “inherited privilege chunner chunner”, but English Heritage sites tend to be much more ruinous, so somehow were less offensive to his egalitarian sensibilities! We tried to have one holiday a year pottering around somewhere in the UK, visiting English Heritage sites that were new to us. The year before he died we took a week off work over Easter, and visited eleven English Heritage properties in one week! We really got our money’s worth out of the membership that year.

After Chris died, I changed the membership from joint to just my name. I thought at first that I might continue to visit the sites, and that it would be an incentive to get out of the house and do something at the weekends. But since I have been widowed, I haven’t gone to a single EH property. All the ones close to me are ones we visited regularly together, including when he was having chemotherapy, when we went to our favourite ruin, Witley Court. I really haven’t felt up to going out for a drive on my own at the weekend (and I don’t like driving anyway) and then dealing with a load of memories when I got to my destination.

So I have reluctantly decided to completely cancel my English Heritage membership. It was a sad thing to do after eighteen years or so of interesting visits, but there’s no point in wasting money on something I’m simply not using. The cheery woman on the membership phone line wanted to know my reason for cancelling my subscription. From the change in tone in her voice when I told her, I don’t think she had a tick box for “widowed and unwilling to go visiting on one’s own and stirring up memories”.

My sister is coming up to stay for a few days next month. She is a member of the National Trust, and I’ve asked her to look up some interesting NT properties nearby that we can go and visit. Those should be “safe”, as I’m unlikely to have visited them with Christopher…….

21 07 2012 icyjumbo Day out Comments (2) Permalink