Skip to content

Syndol is back

I still get regular tension headaches which, if left untreated, can turn really nasty. They don’t respond well to plain paracetamol or ibuprofen, but rather laugh off such puny attempts to deal with them. Regular neck and shoulder massages help keep them at bay, and indeed I’ve got one such booked for later this evening. Another non-medical thing I have found helps is a Thermacare heat-wrap, which is a specially shaped single-use adhesive pad that heats up when exposed to air and sticks directly to the back of my neck. It looks a bit stupid, so I can’t wear one to work unless I have a very high collar on, but it stays hot for about eight hours, and relaxes the shoulder and neck muscles, thus easing the tension headache at its source. In a similar vein, microwaveable wheat packs are also good, and reusable. My sister bought me one for Christmas which is shaped to drape around the neck and shoulders, and I use that at least weekly.

However, I’ve found that the best medication to take, which generally knocks on the head anything short of a migraine, is Syndol. This is a combination of paracetamol, codeine and doxylamine – the latter apparently acting as a muscle relaxant. You have to be careful with it, as the codeine is addictive, so I only use it sparingly for the very worst headaches, and I never take the maximum allowable daily dose. I was introduced to it several years ago by a colleague who absolutely swore by it, and he was right! It’s good stuff, and I generally keep some in my handbag in case of emergencies.

When I was on the cruise to Dubrovnik last August, one of the women on the trip had a terrible tension headache for days. I think it was due to the stress of keeping an eye on her mother who had Alzheimer’s, a tendency to wander off, and apparently no conception that she was on a boat – a dangerous and very wearing combination! I introduced Tessa, the daughter, to Syndol, and within half an hour she was looking much better and said that her headache had lifted magically. She, her partner and her mother were all staying on in a hotel in Dubrovnik after the rest of our party went home, so I left her with my emergency supplies of the painkiller and instructions to use it cautiously, as I could easily get more at the chemist when I got back home. I felt like a drug pusher!

For the last few months, however, there have been no supplies of Syndol available for love nor money. There has in fact been a nationwide shortage. It seems that the factory which makes it changed management, and it took months for a new licence to be issued for them to make more. I was able initially to buy a pack of Boots own-brand tension headache tablets, which had a different form-factor but exactly the same ingredients (and incidentally was a fraction of the price). But these were apparently also manufactured at the same factory, so supplies of those soon dried up as well. Disaster! I tried using just plain paracetamol-and-codeine, which was still available, but it really didn’t do the trick at all. Clearly, it’s the doxylamine which makes all the difference for me. So for the last few months I have been struggling to keep the tension headaches under control, and eking out my very last few doses of the Boots own-brand stuff.

So I was really pleased when I popped into Boots last week to see that their shelves were once again well stocked with Syndol. I bought a box straight away. They don’t yet have any supplies of their cheaper own-brand version, but I’m not going to quibble about that. It’s just good to know that I have a well-stocked medicine drawer again, and an emergency supply in my handbag once more. I absolutely hate being stuck in our Hampshire HQ, several hours away from home and my bed, with an untreatable headache. So hopefully, that should now be a thing of the past, and my quality of life should increase.

17 07 2012 icyjumbo status Comments (4) Permalink

Slow-roast lamb with potato and fennel gratin

When my sister and her boyfriend were here last weekend, and despite the burst water main making life very difficult, I made a big effort for Saturday night dinner, which is traditionally the best meal of the week in my family.   It seemed to go down well – we all had thirds, and J went so far as to ask for the recipe. So rather than just writing some notes up to email her, I thought I’d post them here in case any one else is interested. (Carol and Mark – you’ll recognise this recipe, as this is a variant of the dinner I did for you when we tackled the garden. There’s only a limited number of dishes I’m confident enough to cook when I’ve got guests staying!)

7 hour slow-roast lamb. This is a variant on one of my standards, that I’ve written about before. This time, I bought a whole leg of lamb, as both J & P are confirmed carnivores, and got the butcher to bone it for me, then tie it back together into a neat parcel. I pre-heated the oven to 180ºC. I put a fairly large piece of tin-foil in my roasting tin, and put two cloves of crushed garlic in the bottom. I would have added some sprigs of fresh rosemary too, except that P isn’t too keen on rosemary. Then I put the lamb joint in the tin, seasoned it with salt and pepper, and laid another piece of foil on top. I scrunched the edges of the foil together loosely to make a not-quite-airtight seal. I roasted it at 180º for 30 minutes, then turned the oven down to 150º and left it for 6 hours, before turning the oven back up to 160ºC for the final 30 minutes. All in all I roasted it for 7 hours. When J came to carve it, it fell apart when the knife was waved in its general direction (we had to serve it with a spoon rather than in slices!), yet it was very moist and really tasty. I made a gravy with the lamb juices from the roasting tin and some wine. I haven’t got gravy sussed yet. Christopher used to make it look very easy, but mine always goes lumpy and I end up sieving it. But  it tasted ok which is what counts.

Potato and fennel gratin. I hate recipes which never give you quantities, but I’m afraid I’m going to do exactly that.  I do this dish quite often and I’ve never yet measured out the ingredients, but rather just guessed at how much looked “right”, and it’s always worked. The amount of potato, fennel and onion in the recipe here is for 3 people, but it scales down well for one. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. (Fortunately I have a double oven, or I wouldn’t have been able to do this at the same time as the lamb, which needed a lower temperature) Slice a medium sized fennel bulb thinly. Peel and slice a medium sized onion. Melt some butter with some oil in a pan, add the fennel and onion and stir well. Put a lid on and sauté gently for 15 minutes. The onion should be golden but not burnt, and the fennel should be nice and soft (and will taste less sharp). Meanwhile peel as many potatoes as you think you will need. I did two large ones for the three of us. Slice the potatoes as thinly as you can (I quartered them first as it makes the slicing easier). Put the sliced potatoes in a mixing bowl. Add “some” cream and give it a good stir. I don’t know how much cream I used – a few tablespoons probably. Enough to coat the potato slices generously but not sloppily. Add “some” grated gruyère cheese. I probably used about a small handful. Mix it all around. Then add the cooked fennel and onion and stir again. Season the mixture with salt, pepper and I like to add a good grating of nutmeg. Give it one final good stir, then spoon it into a greased baking dish / gratin dish. Roughly level off the top with the back of the spoon, add some more gruyère cheese on top, and dribble on a bit more cream. Cover with tin foil and bake at 180ºC for one hour. Then remove the foil, turn the oven up to 200ºC and give it another 30 minutes for the top to crisp up and go all golden.

14 07 2012 Gillian recipe Comments (1) Permalink

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Back in March, Malvern Theatres had showing for one week only The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, starring Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy (who I think is gorgeous), Tom Wilkinson, and Ronald Pickup. Clearly it was an all-star cast, and it was the first film for ages that I’ve actually wanted to go and see. Unfortunately the dates clashed both with the Balliol College Gaudy weekend, and with an extremely busy week at work writing a huge milestone report, so I couldn’t find time to go.

Last week I got an email from the theatre saying that they were starting a new initiative, of Tuesday morning cinema showings, and the first film would be The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I still really wanted to see it, but 10:30 on a weekday morning is a very awkward time for anyone who actually has to earn a living. I may only be working reduced hours at the moment, but I’m always in work well before 10:30. However, it so happened that I had plenty of hours in hand, due to spending a very long day on Monday doing a customer site visit. I had no meetings planned for Tuesday, so was able to arrange to take the day off work as time-off-in-lieu.

I was surprised at how popular the screening was. I got there about five past ten, and already there was a queue at the box-office for tickets. By quarter past, the queue was longer than I’ve ever seen it at Malvern cinema. Even the box-office staff were pleasantly surprised at how popular it turned out to be. Given the time of day, and the subject matter of the film, the vast majority of the audience was a good twenty to thirty years older than me – I felt young and spritely in comparison!

The film is an ensemble piece about a group of British pensioners, who for a variety of reasons all decide to out-source their retirement to a hotel in India, which is advertising itself  (with very photoshopped images) as a retirement paradise for the “elderly and beautiful”. Of course when they get there the hotel is a crumbling wreck, run by a hugely over-optimistic but charming young Indian would-be entrepreneur (played by Dev Patel). His approach to life is summed up in his statement that “Things are always all right in the end. So if they’re not all right, it’s not the end”. There is a huge culture shock for them at the beginning, but over the course of a few months, all but one of them becomes acclimatised to India and starts to love it there.

There was one moment that did hit home a bit too closely for comfort. Judi Dench plays a recent widow, and one scene has her phoning a call-centre at her internet provider. They refused to speak to her because she wasn’t the person named on the account, and insisted on speaking to her husband – who of course was dead. I remember all too clearly having exactly the same conversation with numerous call centres!

Apart from that one dodgy moment, I really enjoyed the film. It was laugh-out-loud funny in places, and all the actors were superb – as you would expect of a cast of that quality. I won’t be able to make a regular thing of going to Malvern cinema Tuesday mornings, as work will have to take priority, but I was very pleased that I was able to manage it this week.

12 07 2012 Gillian Day out Comments Off on The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Permalink

Some belated birthday presents

It was particularly annoying that the water main burst on Saturday, because I had my sister and her boyfriend visiting for the weekend. They had been to Stratford to see a play for P’s birthday, and were going home via an overnight stop with me. It was my birthday towards the end of May, so they also took the opportunity of delivering my birthday presents.

I have an absolute hang-up about buying tea-towels. Pretty much all of mine have been gifts, either ones that Christopher got from his mother, or a load I was given by my grandmother. But they are now getting rather elderly, and far too many have large holes in them, I think from being burned by the boiler flue in the airing cupboard, so they are pretty useless for drying up. So when my mother asked what I wanted for my birthday, I requested a stock of new tea-towels, foolishly adding that I didn’t mind how tasteless they were. Well, that was asking for it, as I now have a selection of tea-towels, most of them actually pretty tasteful, but also two QEII Diamond Jubilee  tea-towels! Mind you, even they are more tasteful than one of my old stock which is a very poor likeness of Charles and Di from their Royal Wedding thirty-odd years ago!

J and P also brought their birthday present for me, which J has been teasing me about for weeks, saying that it was too big and heavy for me to take back on the train, that some assembly was required, that it was something of a “conversation piece”, and that I’d never guess what it was. On arrival, they disappeared into my garage to assemble it, then called me in to take a look. Here’s a picture which P took of it – thanks P!.

Easter Island statue plant-pot

As you can see, it is a plant-pot in the shape of a moai, an Easter Island Statue. The reference is to the fact that Christopher and I spent a long weekend on Easter Island for my 40th birthday. That was only five years ago – such a lot has happened in the interim….. The plant in the top forming his hair is a heather, which should bear red flowers and turn reddish in the autumn – which is appropriate because some of the original moai had red volcanic-rock hats or top-knots.  I decided it should sit on my front lawn, where I can see it from the window-seat in the living-room, and where it can keep an eye on all the visitors to the house.

09 07 2012 Gillian garden
status Comments Off on Some belated birthday presents Permalink

Burst water main

I was watching the tennis on the TV on Saturday afternoon when my neighbours popped by to give me a mis-delivered letter. Our house names are similar, and the postcode is the same, so occasionally the postman gets confused, and delivers me some of their post, or vice-versa. Tim asked me if I had any running water – I certainly hoped I did, as I had a load of laundry in the washing machine. I checked the tap, and yes I did have water, but the pressure was lower than usual. Tim informed me that there was a very good reason for that – the water main had burst under the road outside their house, for the third time this year. Severn Trent have kept patching it up, but clearly have not done a proper job.

I went outside to have a look and, sure enough, there was water gushing across the main Malvern to Ledbury road. One of my other neighbours, who is further up the hill than me, had already found that his taps had run dry, as there wasn’t enough water pressure to reach his house. Sometime later four workmen turned up in a Severn Trent van, dug a big hole in the road, and then all four of them stood in it scratching their heads and looking puzzled. I watched them for a while, and they clearly decided that they needed to dig an even bigger hole in the road. It was about then that I lost virtually all water pressure in the house. Cooking dinner suddenly became more of a challenge than I had anticipated! It made me realise just how much water I use when cooking, and how often I wash my hands! It was very difficult with barely a trickle coming out of the taps. The washing machine failed to cope with the lack of water pressure, so I had to pump it out and leave a load of soggy laundry waiting in the basket until they fixed the leak.

After an hour or so, there was a dreadful noise in the pipes as the cistern in the bathroom started refilling. I turned on the tap in the kitchen, and filthy brown water came spluttering out. Clearly a lot of air had got into the system, and for the rest of the weekend turning on a tap has been a somewhat hazardous experience. It’s like playing Russian Roulette – usually it’s ok but every so often there will be a huge air-bubble and the water will explode out of the tap and completely soak me! I’ve had to put my sweater in the wash, as I was rinsing out a roasting dish full of lamb fat and juices when there was a seeming explosion in the pipework, and I got sprayed from head to toe in filthy washing-up water!

At least it wasn’t quite so bad this time as last time the same pipe burst, a few months ago. I hadn’t initially realised there had been a problem, as I had been out during the day while the burst was patched up. But when I flushed the toilet, there was an almighty noise, a hammering and thudding, and the cistern shook so much I thought it was going to come right off the wall! I can quite see how some people might come to believe in Poltergeists! The noise went on for a good ten minutes, which was easily long enough for me to get quite seriously worried. I tried turning on the taps in the kitchen and bathroom, but the airlock was such that nothing came out other than a high pressure hiss of damp air. I’d just decided that the only thing to do was to try to isolate the cistern by turning off its valve and had gone looking for a screwdriver, when I think enough water must have finally forced its way into the cistern mixed in with the air, as it thankfully slowed and shut itself off. The water in all my cold taps was a horrible brown colour though, and even though I ran the kitchen tap for quite a while I thought it better to filter and boil the water before drinking it.

08 07 2012 icyjumbo house
invective Comments Off on Burst water main Permalink

Bogeymen in the loft?

The problem with using mouse poison is that the noise from the creatures gets louder for several days before it all goes quiet. I believe that the poison dehydrates the rodents, which makes them clumsy and hence noisier. So I was pleased that I was away on business immediately after Tim had been here to deal with the mice in the loft, as I hoped that would give time for the poison to take effect and the noise to cease before I got back home.

When Tim went up into the loft to investigate the latest infestation, he found that the bait was still undisturbed, exactly where he had left it last time. And that was despite me hearing mice tap-dancing away for several nights. It seemed as though they hadn’t yet found the doped grain. He added some more for good luck, and also put down a new sort of bait which he’s not used here before.  Rather than poisoned grain, it was a waxy cube about 4cm on a side, which he said the mice like to chew on. He put some of those up in the loft-hatch next to my bedroom. He did warn me though that it might take several more days for the mice to find all the bait, but that when they did there was more than enough up there to have a positively terminal effect.

Unfortunately, it seems he was right on the timings (he usually is, when it comes to the habits and expected behaviour of vermin!). When I got back from Hampshire it wasn’t to a totally quiet and empty house as I had expected. It sounded as though something the size of a cat, with extremely long fingernails, was dragging itself around the loft space overnight, directly above my bed. I know that things always sound louder at night, even more so now that I’m on my own, but this really was nasty. Logic says that it was only an unhappy mouse, but it sounded much more like a ghoul or bogeyman in my loft! I’m not superstitious (too much of a scientist!) but if I were I might think that it was the ghost of all the mice I’ve poisoned over the last dozen years coming back to haunt me!

It has finally gone quiet now, so I think the mice have been vanquished. At least for this time. They’ll be back! Living out in the country as I do, they are an inescapable fact of life. Tim says that he wants to come back in about two months to keep an eye on the situation and top up the bait as necessary, so that there is plenty there as the nights start drawing in for the autumn and the mice start moving back inside.

04 07 2012 Gillian house Comments (5) Permalink

So glad to be home

I’ve been looking forward to the equipment trials for quite a while. As an engineer, I always enjoy testing my ideas with groups of end-users, as it’s by far the best way to make sure one is on the right track, and developing things that people actually want to use. Plus, I find that trials are always very interesting to be involved in. They are, however, extremely hard work and you have to be able to think on your feet and solve problems as they come up. I’m thinking of having T-shirts made for the next trial saying “Flexible, Dynamic & Responsive” as that was the catch-phrase my colleague and I were using all week as we moved fast to keep on top of an ever-changing situation……

I was rather concerned about how I’d cope with the full-on intensity of a trials week, as I’m still only working part-time and get tired far too easily. I promised my boss faithfully that I wouldn’t overdo it, and he stitched me up by nobbling my colleague, who was charged with sending me back to the hotel in a taxi if I started looking too exhausted. That was a right cheek! The colleague is in fact a subcontractor whom I’ve bought in from another member of the consortium I run, so I was the guy’s customer for goodness’ sake, yet he had been given a licence by my boss to bully me mercilessly! And he took that responsibility very seriously! In fact, although I was annoyed at the time when I was bundled into a taxi daily at 4pm with the trial still ongoing, with hindsight it was the right thing to do. I went back to Fawlty Towers and crashed out on my bed for a couple of hours before dinner, but was able to pace myself and got through the week fine.

It is really good to be back home again, with the trial successfully completed. I’m having a really quiet weekend, and will take tomorrow off work as time-off-in-lieu of having to work last Sunday. I’ll get my hair cut, do a big Waitrose shop to restock the larder, and generally just catch my breath again before heading into work on Tuesday and catching up on nearly two weeks’ worth of emails……

01 07 2012 icyjumbo status Comments Off on So glad to be home Permalink

A week at Fawlty Towers

I’ve spent the last week supporting an equipment trial at our Hampshire offices, so I’ve been living out of a suitcase at the same hotel I stayed at last week. The receptionist remembered me, and the fuss I’d made about the Sausage Incident, so I managed to negotiate for a colleague and me to get a free drink on the house on Tuesday night. Given the prices of the drinks there, the fact that I can’t put them through on expenses, and that it was my turn to buy them, that was a minor result. Moral – it’s worth making a polite fuss.

The next day, however, there was another “incident”. The fire alarm sounded at about 7am, then turned off, then sounded again, then turned off again. So it wasn’t clear at first whether it was a real fire (and hence an urgent need to evacuate) or a false alarm. There was no announcement, nor did any of the staff come around banging on our doors to tell us that no action was needed. I’d just got out of the shower when the alarm went off for the first time – I was dripping wet and only wearing a towel! I checked with my eye to the spyhole in the door, and I could see that my way was clear to the nearest fire exit, with no raging inferno in the way, so I decided that I had time to get dressed before re-evaluating the situation.  By the time I’d got my boots on, it seemed that the incident had been resolved – and my colleague then phoned my room to say that he’d spoken to Reception and they said it was a false alarm. Or at least he tried to – but the phone never rang in my room. When I checked later, it transpired that he correctly dialled the extension for Room 14, my room, but the phone in my room claimed to be on the extension for Room 16 which was on the other side of the corridor…..So the hotel had ballsed-up there as well, and we’ve no idea which room (if any) had my room’s extension in it!

It’s entirely understandable that hotels have spurious fire alarms on occasion – these things happen – but it’s how they handle them that really counts. A cascade system, sending the staff to knock on doors and tell people what’s going on, is standard practice in the industry. The hotel in Cambodia got that right, even though they didn’t even have a fire alarm, but when my colleague challenged the receptionist on the matter she seemed completely out of her depth. I was not impressed – fire safety and slick procedures have surely got to be absolutely core to hotel management? It shouldn’t be up to the individual guests to try to guess what’s going on, or to individually check with Reception and phone each other with status updates!

Oh well, at least there wasn’t in fact a raging inferno, and only my temper and sense of humour got frazzled!

29 06 2012 Gillian status Comments Off on A week at Fawlty Towers Permalink

Dinner chez Marco-Pierre White

It was a good job that Tim the pest-controller was able to fit me in on Tuesday to deal with the mice, because I spent the rest of the week away on business at our Hampshire offices. That involved staying overnight for two nights, and it’s always a major challenge finding somewhere to stay that fits all the necessary criteria. Firstly, the hotel has to be “approved” by the company’s corporate booking scheme, which basically put an upper limit on the price and standard. Secondly, I need it to be reasonably close to the office, as I’m just not up to a long commute at the moment after a full day’s hard work. I’m also too tired to go out into one of the local towns in the evening to find food, so the hotel must have a restaurant that’s open every evening. Finally, there are some hotels I’ve stayed in previously that have reminded me so strongly of Fawlty Towers that I’ve crossed them off the list of places I’m prepared to stay.

So I spent Wednesday and Thursday staying at a hotel about a 10 minutes drive away from work, which fitted all the criteria and had the additional alleged major benefit of having a Marco-Pierre White restaurant as part of the establishment. I stayed at the same hotel earlier this year, while I was away on an equipment trial while my kitchen was redecorated, and have to say that I was not impressed by the food at all. Marco-Pierre White may have read the menu and endorsed it, but he quite clearly wasn’t working in the kitchen while I was there! The food was uninspiring, limited and frankly boring – I really couldn’t see what the fuss was about. My local pub does food at least as good!

But on Thursday this week, the Great Man himself descended on the hotel restaurant to supervise the kitchen and present a “tasting menu”. It’s the sort of thing I might once have enjoyed going to with Christopher, but not on my own. Plus, the cost of the dinner was greater than I was paying for bed & breakfast and I could just imagine the fuss if I tried to put that through on expenses! The hotel restaurant was fully booked, so even if I had been up for a formal dinner on my own after a long day at work, there wasn’t a spare table anyway.

Us residents were treated as second-class citizens, banished to our rooms and told to order room service from a very limited menu. One course only – no starters or desserts – and very few options. I decided to go for chicken, green beans, and dauphinoise potatoes, which sounded entirely acceptable. It took a good ten minutes hanging on the phone before Reception managed to take my order – they were apparently in utter chaos with all the guests arriving for The Dinner. But the kitchen were clearly in even more of a fluster than Reception – because when my order turned up, I got bangers & mash with no vegetables, rather than the chicken! I did think about making a huge fuss and sending it back, but given the complete state of chaos that everything had apparently been reduced to, I feared I wouldn’t see my dinner for hours, and I was hungry! So I reluctantly accepted the sausages under protest.

It really doesn’t seem to me to be good business to neglect your hotel residents, most of whom are business people with plenty of repeat business on offer, in favour of punters for a one-off swanky dinner. It certainly pissed me off, and I made my feelings known very clearly when I checked out this morning!

22 06 2012 icyjumbo food
invective Comments (4) Permalink

Waiting for the Mouse-man

I really shouldn’t have moaned about being woken up by the dawn chorus. 04:29 is a veritable lie-in compared to being awoken by tap-dancing, heavy-partying rodents at 3am! Yes, the mice are back in my loft, and as usual are living it up directly above my bed. They usually aren’t much of a nuisance over the summer, normally only moving into the house in the winter. But the weather recently has been so atrocious that they seem to have decided they want to be indoors. I certainly sympathise with that feeling, but I’m not going to tolerate having my sleep disturbed by them.

I’ve been working from home today while waiting for Tim, my trusty pest-controller, to come and deal with them. I have him on an annual retainer, and I have to say that’s worth every penny. He’ll come out within just a day or two of a call from me, and I can call as many times per year as I need, at no extra charge. Living out in the country as I do, I can’t expect to avoid mice entirely, so it is very reassuring to have Tim on call. I don’t mind them in the garden, but they do a huge amount of damage when they get in the loft, chewing on insulation and on anything I store up there. Indeed, when the man came round a few weeks ago to survey the insulation in the loft, he commented that I’d obviously got mice, as they had had a good chew on everything!

19 06 2012 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Waiting for the Mouse-man Permalink