Tag: food

Seasonal vegetables

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Sliced carrots, which instead of being the usual orange are a deep purple colour. Some have a lighter ring around the core

We got purple carrots in the veg box this week. If I told you I’d been saving them for Advent I’d be lying: in fact I fancied leek and potato soup on Monday, had a really busy day on Wednesday so just defrosted some tomato sauce and cooked some pasta, thought the broccoli was probably more urgent on Friday, and didn’t cook on the other days. So in fact it’s worked out very appropriately with these magnificent carrots arrayed in deep purple for the solemn season of Advent. Some of them even have stars in the middle, as you see, although these didn’t look as striking after cooking.

It’s St Andrew’s day as well, of course. I did think about that (very slightly) in advance, and cooked a bought salmon en croûte in his honour, and thought of my last church, dedicated, like many others in Cambridge, to the first fisherman-apostle. But it’s been a wearing day at the end of a wearing month, and I don’t quite feel as if I’ve properly got started on Advent yet, or given St Andrew the attention he deserves. Plenty more of Advent to come, of course. St Andrew might have to wait for next year.

Stir up!

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Apple tree, with a few leaves still on the branches, silhouetted against a cloudy sky. One single apple is caught between a branch and the top of the trellis

Not long after I started taking Advent Sunday as my personal new year, somebody asked me whether I was going to push my end-of-year wrap-ups and preparations forward into November. No, I said, the idea was to take the whole of December (and the first week of January, come to that) to do it at a leisurely pace, and to give me something to do other than getting fruitlessly annoyed by all the commercial-Christmas tat.

Which still holds true. My husband bought me a packet of lebkuchen, which are already in the shops: I love them, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to touch them. Not in November. And yet this year I’ve noticed myself looking forward eagerly to Stir Up Sunday – today – the last Sunday of the Church year, Christ the King in new money – and the making of the pudding. Preparing for the preparation. And I’ve been getting out the recipe books and flicking through things that look tasty, things that look fun, things I’d never normally cook or eat but which might be approached in a spirit of “It’s Christmas”.

I do like a nice recipe book. And I have been reasonably adventurous this year. (Quince, ginger and raisin suet pudding, the other weekend, from Modern Pressure Cooking. Very good.) But I’m not usually this diverted by Christmas food.

It’s partly knowing that I’ll get much less church than in the pre-baby days, and other elements of the festival seem more promising (not that I will have any more opportunity to cook, of course).

It’s partly that this year I know I can eat it without causing myself significant abdominal discomfort. (Last year I had my gallbladder removed on 30 December; from the previous Christmas up until that point, eating anything fatty put me at risk of vomiting and hideous pain.)

It’s partly having stayed, last weekend, at a Premier Inn attached to a Beefeater which was exuberantly and prematurely Christmassy.

It’s partly having led an Advent study day yesterday, based on the O Antiphons (usually encountered 17-23 December), and having been preparing for that for several weeks. (We followed it with Evensong, and used the readings for the Eve of Christ the King. They worked very well.)

It might partly be wanting this year to be over and done with. It’s been intense, and often painful, and it’s gone very fast. So why not wrap it up now?

It might partly be wanting an answer to the question So what do we do about the Christmas pudding, in the absence of our mother, who was always in charge of it? How do we stir it, when none of us is near any of the others?

And this year the answer looked like this: I made the Christmas pudding, out of the recipe book that she always used. Except she always used walnuts where the recipe says almonds, and I didn’t have quite enough walnuts, so I made up the difference with pecans. And I found the last-but-one-apple from our trees. And I sent my brothers a Zoom invitation so that they could observe the stirring.

And now the pudding is steaming away quietly on the hob. It wasn’t remotely the same, of course. But it will do. I might even open the lebkuchen.

Some things I have read

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… since the last time I posted about reading, which I am aware was some time ago. I haven’t been reading much at all, and it’s almost all been non-fiction. (Exception: Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang, Kate Wilhelm; the latest Jill Mansell; and, very early on Sunday morning, Blood Sweat Glitter, Iona Datt Sharma, which was exactly what I needed.)

A lot of that non-fiction has been one good idea, maybe two, expanded upon at great length until a book happens. Examples: several parenting books (your child is a person; whatever they are doing or not doing at the moment, it probably makes sense in their head and it will help you both to try to understand); Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals (life is short; might as well get on with things; start anywhere); and Radical Candor (Kim Scott). This was mentioned in the women’s development programme I’m undertaking at work, and turned up in the library, so I borrowed it. As I’m not a manager, most of it was of limited relevance for me, but again, the subtitle (How To Get What You Need By Saying What You Mean) tells the story. I’m not sure that it tells you much that an Ask A Manager addiction wouldn’t.

Nurture the Wow (Danya Ruttenberg). Awful title. I assume this is the “two countries separated by a common language” thing, because I know very few Britons who would be able to say this one without either throwing up or dying of embarrassment, but clearly the US publishers thought it would work. Fortunately I a) knew what it was getting at; and b) had read enough of Rabbi DR’s other work to know that I like her writing. The subtitle is more descriptive, if not much less skin-crawly: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting. Anyway, this is the best book I’ve yet read that’s intended for religious people who have become parents. It draws on many different traditions, my own included, and addresses pretty much all the emotional and physical and spiritual challenges (and opportunities) that parenthood presents. I’ve just sent my copy off to a friend who’s recently had a baby.

Wholehearted Faith and Searching for Sunday (Rachel Held Evans) – not so much about parenthood, but just the thing when I needed to read something by an intelligent Christian woman of more or less my age who’d thought about things.

To get them off my shelves, where they’ve been since 2013 or thereabouts when I bought them from a Woking junk stall, Honest to God (John A. T. Robinson) and The Ferment in the Church (Roger Lloyd). A fascinating snapshot of the preoccupations of the Church of England in the 1960s, and I think mainly interesting to me as such. Much of it is either the way I think about things anyway or has been superseded. I was amused by the way it seemed to take the Bishop of Woolwich the entire book to notice that he’d replaced one metaphor with another.

Eat Up! (Ruby Tandoh) – enthusiastic about pretty much every sort of food, sceptical about fad diets, scathing about food snobbery. A delicious book.

And here’s a picture of a passion flower, because why not.

A passion flower. On a nearby leaf is a small ladybird.

Week-end: South Yorkshire edition

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Looking upwards into a church ceiling where wood and concrete form an eight-pointed star, with the gaps filled with blue, yellow, green and red stained glass

About time I did one of these again…

The good

A trip to Sheffield for the annual Ultreya GB. I missed last year’s, though I hadn’t intended to (in retrospect, my ideas of what would be possible with a small baby were somewhat unrealistic), and it was good to be back. It was quite a different experience: I was very tired (see below) and also I don’t usually spend the event climbing up and down all the available steps in the cathedral. But it all came together for me in the last hymn – a very lively Amazing Grace – with the banners lined up and the baby clapping along in delight.

Some delightful fellow passengers and some railway staff who may in fact have been angels.

The difficult and perplexing

A month’s worth of interrupted sleep has trashed my immune system, the nursery germs have pounced, and I was very wobbly earlier in the week. And I’m not a nice person when I’m ill and tired.

Two hours and forty minutes on a train, each way. The way back was more trying than the way out.

What’s working

Sloggi long pants. Do they make me feel about a hundred and two? Yes, particularly the beige ones. Is it worth it to make bare legs bearable in hot weather? Absolutely. (Yes, I am aware of the Snag ‘chub rub’ shorts. Quite apart from the hideousness of the name, I can’t see that synthetic material next the skin would help in any way, however much I like their tights.)

Reading

Quite a bit! Having read She Who Became The Sun earlier in the summer, I picked up He Who Drowned The World (Shelley Parker-Chan) when it was on offer a few weeks ago. Equally fun (in its extremely dark way); the magical realism has more of an active influence on the plot this time round. I wasn’t convinced it stuck the landing, but the overall experience was sufficiently enjoyable to render that largely irrelevant.

Also on offer recently was Sea of Tranquility (Emily St John Mandel). This was a bit of a disappointment. I read Station Eleven early in 2020 and was very struck by how vivid and alien the post-apocalyptic world was. Sea of Tranquility, by contrast, all seemed extremely twenty-first century in terms of the way that the characters thought and spoke, with the different settings just so much window-dressing. The time travel plot also didn’t work for me; I think the aim was to subvert the usual clichés, but it just felt like a cop-out.

And Kobo also suggested Consider Phlebas (Iain M. Banks) for 99p, so I decided it was probably time I tried the Culture series.

Yesterday I started One Pair of Feet (Monica Dickens) which is very entertaining so far.

Then today I picked up N or M (Agatha Christie) because it was on the floor. I am less fond of Tommy and Tuppence than I am of most of Christie’s other series detectives, so missed this one on last year’s epic re-read. But I breezed through it and then picked up Postern of Fate to remind myself what happened to the family afterwards.

Writing

Nothing to speak of, though I have been doing a little worldbuilding in my head.

Making

One ridiculously huge baby sock, and now most of one more sensible one. I also converted a little binder into an earring holder (I will try to remember to post pictures of this).

Watching

The Paralympics, on and off. I was pleased to catch Sarah Storey’s umpteenth win, as Channel 4 also showed a decent chunk of the race. (I have found both the BBC and Channel 4 very frustrating in their tendency to show fragments of an event that have a Great British Medal Hope and nothing else. But it’s probably just as well this year, because I’ve had very little telly time.)

Looking at

Ely Photographic Club’s exhibition at Babylon Arts. There were a few pieces there that made me smile, and several that were clearly very technically skilled even if not really my thing. Also, Sheffield cathedral.

Cooking

A very hot vegetable curry: the veg box contained a bag of Padrón peppers, every single one of which was the ‘really quite spicy’ variety, so unsuitable for serving as a main/side dish in the usual way. Not one of my most successful dishes, though I’m pleased with it as a creative response to a problem.

Eating

This year’s fancy Magnum flavours, an impulse buy when they were on offer in Co-op. I’m still not entirely convinced that ice cream and popping candy is a happy combination, but it’s different, I’ll give it that.

Moving

We continue our WalkRuns (being runs that are in fact mostly walks).

Noticing

Loads of dragonflies this year. Or possibly damselflies. They don’t stay still long enough for me to be able to tell the difference.

In the garden

Ripe apples. I’ve pruned all the apple trees bar one. The next job is to take out the dead box (or was it privet?) bushes that got eaten by beetles last year.

Appreciating

Cursillo. It’s totally bonkers, but there is space in there for people to be Christians and also themselves, and that is something I was missing for a long time and something for which I continue to be grateful.

And, needless to say, every night when I get to sleep before midnight and get to wake up after six.

Acquisitions

I found a little makers’ cooperative shop in Sheffield and picked up a fabric patch (to join the several I have still to sew on), a sticker, and a pair of teal stud earrings.

Line of the week

Monica Dickens, weighing up her options:

The Land Army? One saw oneself picking apples in a shady hat, or silhouetted against the skyline with a couple of plough horses, but a second look showed one tugging mangel-wurzels out of the frozen ground at five o’clock on a bitter February morning.

This coming week

The emerging routine is slightly disrupted by a committee meeting, and then at the weekend there’s an exciting sea voyage. And that’s the last excursion for a little while, and that’s probably just as well. I might even update this blog more.

Leftover black pudding chilli

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Baked potato with a bean and vegetable sauce

I had a morcilla (Spanish black pudding) left over from a dish I cooked at the weekend, so I skinned it and bashed it around in a saucepan over a medium heat until it broke up. I added a chopped onion and let it fry in the fat a while, then added three tins:

  • Black beans
  • Chopped tomatoes with garlic
  • Carrots and petits pois

And some smoked paprika and some chilli flakes, and let it all simmer together while I crisped up a microwaved jacket potato in the oven.

That was yesterday. Today I added red wine and more chilli flakes, and served it with the end of a sour cream and chive dip. Even better.

Summer-end: big milk thing

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Whoosh. Suddenly it’s six weeks later and we’re rounding off August with a blue moon. It seemed like a good moment to pick things up again over here.

The good

The baby is delightful, and gets more interesting by the day. It’s lovely, too, seeing others’ reactions. So many people are genuinely pleased to see her, friends and strangers and the guy I know by sight but whose name is a mystery.

We have succeeded in getting out of the house. Several times. There was my birthday; there was Pride; there was the Cursillo study day (labyrinths); there was a barbecue at my aunt’s; there were at least three church services.

The difficult and perplexing

This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I would say the same thing at times that are not three in the morning. It’s the being on duty all the time.

It’s the first time in years I haven’t been in Ventnor for Fringe week. (I did have a weird feeling last year that It Was All Going To Be Different, though I hadn’t guessed how or why.) I lived it vicariously on the Instagram hashtag.

Hormones. I spent the first month crying about pretty much everything. (Child is not feeding. Child will not stop feeding. Child is small and utterly dependent on me. I wish Pa could have seen her…) Plus, of course, the lack of sleep.

What’s working

Having my mother to stay. Coke (the fizzy sort). Keeping in touch with other adults over the internet. A sausage-shaped cushion thing that ties on behind my back. Remembering that this is my only job at the moment.

Also, let me stop a moment to extol the Really Useful Boxes. Because they are. Quite apart from storing baby clothes and nappies and toys, I’ve been using them as footstools, for handwashing, and for catching and evicting a huge spider. And the cat likes sitting on them.

A fluffy black and white cat sits on a clear plastic box

Reading

A couple of ‘how on earth do I do this motherhood thing’ books: What Mothers Do (especially when it looks like nothing) (Naomi Stadlen); The Gentle Sleep Book (Sarah Ockwell-Smith). Both useful in confirming that I wasn’t missing something obvious, it really is this intense, and there’s only so much you can do before you just decide that this is the way things are and you’re going to go with it; both, I think, pushing back against the Gina Ford school of babyraising (which seems to have fallen out of favour among the professionals, at least in our neck of the woods). Of the two, the Stadlen is the keeper.

The Balloonists: the history of the first aeronauts by L. T. C. Rolt. Rolt was most famously the author of Red for Danger, the absolute classic of disaster analysis. There’s a certain amount of disaster in this (as you’d expect given the quantity of hydrogen used in the early days of ballooning) but it’s by no means the whole story. The whole story is very interesting and engagingly told.

Feeling in need of something trashy I reread Glittering Images (Susan Howatch) and began Glamorous Powers before deciding that really I wanted to read about scandalous bishops more than psychic manpain. So I have abandoned Starbridge and moved on to Lindford (Acts and Omissions, Catherine Fox).

Writing

Nothing to speak of in terms of new words on new pages, but I should have some news on an older project soon.

Making

I’m planning a full skirt in olive green with lilypad patches. Need to do some maths and obtain the olive green…

Watching

A lot of daytime TV. I’m particularly enjoying The Repair Shop at the moment; I’ve been thinking a lot over the past couple of years about physical objects and sentimental value, about what things mean and how good it is when something can keep on doing the job it was made to do.

I’ve also returned to Ghosts, and this time managed to get past the second-hand embarrassment of the early episodes and into the kinder, more constructive stories of season 2.

Before that there was the world athletics championships; before that there was the super combined world cycling championships; before that there was the Tour de France.

Looking at

Pretty cars gathered outside the cathedral. Some gorgeous work by Ely Guild of Woodturners (who, if any of them are reading this, ought all to be charging twice as much for their pieces as they currently do).

Cooking

Is pretty much impossible with a baby. I did manage to pickle some plums (and regret leaving the jars in the conservatory in the hottest month of the year) and, several weeks after that, make the topping of a crumble.

Eating

A lot of ready meals. The charming snackpot that Tony assembles and brings me before he goes to bed and leaves me to the night shift (this evening’s contained two sorts of pretzels, dried apricots, crystallised ginger, a chocolate digestive biscuit, and three Mikado sticks.) And a reuben sandwich at the last (and, for me, only) Foodie Friday market of the year.

Moving

A little bit of walking.

Playing

Whatever will keep me from falling asleep with a baby on my lap. Minesweeper, mostly.

Noticing

Dragonflies. Or are they damselflies? I’m not sure what the difference is. Butterflies. Sunflowers. Hollyhocks.

In the garden

Chaos in the back (it is, infuriatingly, a really good year for fruit, and I’m not managing to get out to pick it, and if I were I wouldn’t get round to doing anything with it). Progress at the front, where we have much less in the way of slate chippings and much more in the way of lavender and thyme.

Appreciating

All the people who have come to see us, sent messages, cards and presents, and generally provided solidarity in a massive life change. The Rosie Birth Centre and the community midwifery team.

Acquisitions

Leaving aside all the baby gifts, or we’d be here all night: a lovely turned elm bowl from the woodturners’ exhibition; a couple more Joanie dresses; a whole load of plants (Norfolk Herbs: very reasonable); more fabric patches than I actually needed; some Pride tat.

Hankering

I haven’t been to the seaside this year other than incidentally, and I’d really like to. I don’t think it’s going to happen, though.

Line of the week

L. T. C. Rolt on the develoment of the dirigible:

Unholy marriages were consummated – most of them only on paper, fortunately – between the balloon, the kite, the ornithopter and the helicopter.

The cat’s current preferred location

In the conservatory, either on top of a large cardboard box, or on the windowsill for optimum garden surveillance.

How has your summer been? Have you also given up on Twitter, or were you never on it in the first place? What’s your social medium of choice these days?

Week-end: little to tell (which doesn’t really help)

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Elaborate appliqué panel depicting the Garden of Eden

The good

Out and about. It is very good to not have Covid any more. It is also fun to have the use of a car.

The mixed

People are thinking of me! Which is lovely. But they all want to know how I am doing. Which is difficult, because there is very little to tell, and I tend to find that a problem shared is a problem doubled because I then feel that I have to deal with their feeling bad for me on top of the feeling bad myself. For this reason I am mostly hiding, at least from people I know.

The difficult and perplexing

Heat + waiting + hearing about other people’s relevant and irrelevant experiences and opinions = getting stressed and scared

Also, heat = dehydration = a horrible headache that had me worrying all night about pre-eclampsia. And eventually being very sick.

Also, something has been eating my legs and I don’t know whether it’s mosquitoes getting in at night or whether there are still fleas in the sofa.

What’s working

Airplane mode. Except I do need to know when the midwife wants to see me, so that’s not an option today…

And having a good cry or three. And yawning.

Reading

Continuing with Clorinda’s circle, because they are good friends and, while many distressing things happen, they mostly do so off-screen and also I already know about them all.

This morning I started Beryl: in search of Britain’s greatest athlete (Jeremy Wilson): very good so far.

Writing

I did a bit of work on Don’t Quit The Day Job but have mostly Not Been In The Mood (must try taking laptop into the garden; half the trouble is that my study is too hot).

Making

I finished the two-flannels-and-a-popper thing and can now use the very very ends of bars of soap.

Watching

Some Wimbledon. Some Tour de France. Some Giro Donne. But my concentration is not great at the moment and I am finding it difficult to get engaged, so not very much of any of them these last few days.

Looking at

Threads Through Creation (twelve panels of silk appliqué representing the Genesis creation stories) at Ely Cathedral. Medieval art and Mediterranean embroidery at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. Local history at Ely Museum.

Also, Ben’s Yard, which is a new shopping village between Ely and Soham. Rather underwhelming so far, although the climbing frame (in the shape of Ely Cathedral) is magnificent.

Cooking

Baked gnocchi from the Roasting Tin book (I have concluded that our oven runs ten degrees cooler than advertisted).

Eating

A Fitzbillies Chelsea bun. A dismal chickpea curry at the pub (I suspect the efficacy of curry is a myth, but it’s a good excuse, if the curry is good – which this wasn’t).

Playing

I got PomoFarm on the grounds that it’s four quid and worth a shot. I haven’t yet decided whether it’s working for me. (I’m not sure whether the pomodoro method itself works for me.)

Noticing

A tiny door (there are a few around Cambridge) made to look like that of No. 10 Downing Street, with purple tentacles emerging from around the edge. (Well, it would explain a lot…)

In the garden

I have started work on the front garden. Two passion flowers to grow up the railings, one rosemary plant, and six lavender plants (Lidl were doing boxes of three for four quid). That row will be finished by bringing one of the bay trees round to the front, but it’s going to take more, stronger people (I can barely manage a watering can at the moment), possibly with a trolley of some sort. The good thing about the horrible slate chippings is that they’re on top of plastic sheeting which can be pulled up a bit at a time.

In the back garden, the runner beans are just beginning to flower; so are the tomatoes; and one of the chilli plants has produced a flower. I have forgotten which chilli was which, which may have been a mistake.

Appreciating

The cat’s been very sociable these last couple of days. It’s been nice.

Acquisitions

Plants, as detailed above. Also a new lampshade for the sitting room, in what turned out to be a perfect match for the barszcz coloured wall. This means that we can replace the hideous ribbon-and-plastic-crystal one in my study/the nursery with the boring but inoffensive lilac one we previous haddown there.

In the Emmaus charity shop: a large reel of black yarn which I intend to use for darning; a cafetière (sometimes one needs to provide more than one person at a time with decent coffee); and a paperback copy of Madam, Will You Talk?

And, in hankerings fulfilled (well, almost), a garden table (currentlyh in bits) and a filleting knife. I must go and buy another fish somewhere.

Hankering

Really I just want this baby to show up.

Line of the week

I remember loving this line (from ‘Had we never loved sae kindly, we had ne’er been broken-hearted’ in A Man of Independent Mind) the first time round, too.

O my dear, says Clorinda with a tearful laugh, sure ’tis no matter upon which one may make mathematical calculations of degrees of infelicity.

Sunday snippet

Mostly I’ve been moving things around, but this bit’s new:

And sure, the Tour de France is never going to be an option for me, for any number of reasons. But I could quite easily get to a standard where the London to Brighton ride was a realistic proposition. I’d just need to put the miles in. It’s exactly the same principle with writing, and with a much smaller chance of road rash.

This coming week

I intend to hide, mostly. How many how are you? questions can I avoid?

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!

Week-end: alarums and excursions

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Four houses, all with many small birds perched along the ridges of the roofs

The good

My friend Maggie was ordained priest yesterday. I’d said a while ago not to bother saving me a ticket, because I might well be otherwise engaged, but in the event I wasn’t, so I watched the service on Youtube and then walked up to the cathedral to give her a hug afterwards. (I timed it pretty much perfectly: left the house during the distribution of communion; got there just as the bishop and new priests were coming out to have their photos taken.)

It was really lovely to get out and see people (there were others I knew milling around, because the Church of England is a very small world). It was lovely to get out at all, really.

The mixed

Slow progress is still progress. Midnight alarums and excursions (don’t worry, everything’s fine).

The difficult and perplexing

Really, aside from a mild case of cabin fever, I have nothing to worry about. I’m not dealing terribly well with waiting, but then I never do.

What’s working

Picking one thing to do, doing that, and then having a lie-down.

Reading

I finished the main run of The Comfortable Courtesan stories, got a bit weepy at the end, and decided that I wasn’t quite feeling up to tackling the extended universe.

I also read Along the Way: the journey of a father and son (Martin Sheen, Emilio Estevez, and Hope Edelman). My favourable impression of this began with the fact that the ghostwriter is credited in large letters on the cover, and continued more or less all the way through. It’s mostly a memoir of family life, but it goes into a lot of detail on the making of The Way. (Which is what drew me to pick it up in the library discard sale.) I was very surprised to discover that they were shooting The Way in September 2009, which was only a couple of years after I walked the Camino Frances. But then it takes a long time for a film to happen, and I didn’t see it on its first release.

I’ve written before, briefly, about where The Way fails to convey the sheer grinding physicality of the Camino. And it is the physicality that sticks with me: the texture of boots that have been left too close to the fire overnight; walking through period pain so intense that I was sick (never before or since…) I think it’s basically impossible to get across such a three-dimensional (four-dimensional, maybe: time is an important component) experience in a two-dimensional medium. What the film does capture is the power of encounter and relationship; what it skips over is the fleeting nature of most of those encounters.

But Along the Way wasn’t just a book about the film; it was about parenthood, and masculinity (toxic and otherwise), and acting, and the film industry, and faith, and what all of that looks like in practice. And it seemed honest, and it was a very engaging read.

I am not sure that I would walk the Camino again – certainly not in summer, probably not the Camino Frances – and a lot of that is feeling that I’ve had my turn and I need to make space for other people. And, of course, the less generous flipside, which is that there are now too many people on the Camino, and it would no longer be what it was. (Of course it wouldn’t: I’m not twenty-one any more. Or thirty-one. And I seem to do it at major transitions in my life, and the current major transition is one that makes long-distance walking a lot less practical than it was. And the pilgrimage-shaped hole in my life is currently filled with Cursillo. Although I shouldn’t be entirely surprised if I end up doing it again at forty-one, never mind everything that I’ve just said.) And I’m sure The Way had something, though not everything, to do with the increase in traffic. Even so, I came away from this book feeling in greater charity towards the film and towards the Sheen/Estevez clan in general. They seem like a good bunch.

Making

I’ve been sewing two flannels together (very slowly) and will shortly add a popper as a fastening, so that I end up with a pouch that I can fill with ends of soap that have got too small and annoying to be in the soap dish.

Watching

Still almost entirely sports. Eastbourne, last week, and now the Tour and the Giro Donne. (A friend has suggested that we name the impending sprog after whoever wins the day’s stage. I am not sure that we will go with this.)

Looking at

Pictures of London Pride on Instagram. I’m wryly amused that I ignored or turned down four separate offers of wristbands (the bisexuals, the Bond fans, the Christians, and work – not sure this really counts as intersectionality) on the grounds that I might be busy, and then was only very slightly busy. But actually I’ve never particularly wanted to go to London Pride, and the idea of going to London at all is mightily unappealing at present.

Cooking

Roast carrots and parsnips with quinoa, from the Roasting Pan Cookbook. Either the timings in the book are off, or the fan function of our oven is not trustworthy, but an extra ten minutes on the standard oven function and with the foil removed did the trick, and the result was very nice.

Also a new potato, broad bean and feta salad. (Mint, thyme and bayleaves in the cooking water; chopped chervil, parsley and capers in the dressing. Really very good.)

And I think I’ve finally got the knack of yoghurt in the Instant Pot (use full fat milk, boil for an extra five minutes beyond what the pot thinks, incubate for five hours).

The peach shrub is done in theory but in practice needs to mellow more. Still, it has got me to learn how to use the Soda Stream at long last (it’s not at all difficult; I am just not that interested in fizz).

Eating

As above.

Noticing

Hollyhocks! They seem to be a thing around here; they grow very tall and they are bright and cheerful. Maybe I should grow some.

And, as per picture at the top of this post, rooftops and rooftops of starlings. They are usually around, but not usually in such numbers. We’d had eight or so demolishing a suet cake on the bird feeder earlier in the day, but I wasn’t expecting to see this. This isn’t even all the relevant roofs. I don’t know if you can call it a murmuration if it’s mostly static, but either way, it was quite a sight.

In the garden

Fruit is swelling. (I’m going to have to pull up some of the jungle under the plum trees in order to be able to harvest without being scratched or stung.) Lots of things could do with a trim. There are just a couple of love-in-a-mist flowers that have self-seeded from plants I grew… maybe our first year here?

I have drawn up a plan for the front but am not going to act on it until bending over becomes more comfortable.

Appreciating

People! (Particularly Tony.)

Hankering

I’m missing the old days of LiveJournal, the way it used to be in 2006 or so. Most of the social media sites seem to be becoming unusable in one way or another. I just want to see what the people I like are up to! In such a way that I can find the posts again if I want to look back at them! And without having to look at the same one over and over and over again!

The cat’s current preferred location

On top of the paper trimmer in the conservatory. I am glad she has moved on from the fridge; I can’t feel that having little clumps of black fluff float down into the kitchen was entirely sanitary.

Line of the week

Havi on screens and screening:

Nature abhors a vacuum, and goes wild for a door.

This coming week

Your guess is as good as mine, honestly.

Anything you’d like to share from this week? Any hopes for next week? Share them here!