A sieve

Take an old-fashioned garden sieve and thread lights through:

Are you boring?

Is your coat black or dark grey or brown? In other words is it really boring? It struck me as I walked into the playground at school and waited outside the classroom for my daughter that every parent there was in a black coat. My coat is red.

Silver spoon in your mouth

Stick a spoon in your mouth whilst cutting up onions and you won't cry. David tried it today and it supposedly worked although he told me after the event.....although I might have been the one crying looking on at his efforts with spoon and knife.

Recordering

By popular demand I'm back. Well...when I say popular I mean a few people have asked where have I been. Well...when I say a few people it's actually one person who wants to read new erudite and compelling blogs from 88. Well... when I say one person is interested in my writing I mean it's actually a close friend who is nosey and wants to keep up with what's happening in the Blakeley household. So I'm back.

So Dermot....sorry I mean my whole readership....my daughter is learning the recorder and I am so excited. I realise I've been waiting for this day since she's been born. My daughter is learning the recorder. Not that my son couldn't do it too if he wanted but he thinks it's an awful instrument and makes a terrible racket. He thinks the recorder makes a terrible racket too.You see I never got to learn the recorder when I was seven and I wanted to. I can't remember why I didn't get the chance. My best friend did it but somehow it passed me by and I've sulked ever since. I was fascinated in assemblies when older children got their descant recorders out: a little recorder that had been fed and had grown and grown and grown.

Still I have my chance now. I'm mastering Twinkle Twinkle Little Star at the moment. And in a fashion it does sound like the nursery rhyme. Oh yes and my daughter is learning too and I'm being encouraging and supportive and smiley. I look forward to her performing in a little school concert and moving onto fatter and  bigger  recorders. I will enj She will enjoy performing I feel sure.

P.S. Hope this keeps you up-to-date, Dermot.

Christmas Cake

I made my Christmas Cake the other day, following my Mum's recipe. It's full of fruit and cherries. I have tried it in previous years to absolute disastrous results as I think my thermostat had really broken on my old oven so any cake that had to stay in over 30 mins came out black. But now I have a new oven.

I lined the cake tin, I mixed the cake ingredients and in it went for 3 hours at a very low heat and came out with not one burnt mark. My Mum's tip to cover the top with milk before it goes in the oven  to prevent scorching worked a treat.

I am feeding it now with alcohol and resisting the temptation to cut into it to see if it's as deliciously moist and flavoursome as my Mums used to be...only 5 or 6 weeks to go. I will then inexpertly plonk some marzipan on top, sprinkle with glitter and other small cakey decorations that I can purchase in a tube at the supermarket and then stand my little models of a stag and fawn on top. You can tell I don't go in for brilliant decoration - more rustic is my approach.

Don't know whether to cut into it in the immediate build-up to Christmas and have with mince pies on offer for guests and risk it disappearing before Christmas Day or wait until the big day itself.

Think I'll have to make two.

Castle of Park

Castle of Park including two ghosts

I have been lazy and not posted for some time. It could in part be due to the fact I started a new job in September so all my energies have been going into that. But I'm back and I have a new tower. Not quite a perfect tower as we couldn't get out on to the roof but 2 spiral staircases and 4 floors and we had it all to ourselves. We were in heaven.

 

Castle of Park is a fortified tower house set in Dumfries and Galloway which we slept in for four nights. Lots of hide 'n' seek and chase and a monopoly game that went on and on which meant there wasn't quite enough time left to complete the intricate jigsaw that David started just too late. There was also the 'let's turn all the lights off on the stairs and then challenge each other to go up one set and down the other with just a torch while Mum makes spooky noises' game. I was too scared to even contemplate doing the challenge (I had to wake David up to go to the loo with me in the middle of the night) but the children loved it.

Egglestone Show

I never thought I'd say this but last weekend I felt a bit like a city girl. Me! A farmer's daughter. True enough I abandoned all thought of farming forty odd years ago. In fact I never abandoned the thought, it just never occurred to me that I would ever want to spend my adult life farming. And last weekend I guess I realised how removed I was from agricultural pursuits.

We went to visit family in Teesdale - a beautiful part of north England and we went to Egglestone Show. It was a lovely show. There was horseriding including tiny tiny tots riding ponies; a falconry display; carriage driving; glorious local food; sheep, cattle, even lamas and a tent full of homegrown veg to make David and I weep to look at the paltry size of own home grown efforts. The carrots, parsnips, leeks were ginormous.

It was a beautiful day and I had on my sandals which immediately outed me to be the city girl I have become. This was a September show with a slight chill in the wind even though the sun was shining. I needed knee high, leather boots. The type that are a cross between riding boots and wellies and are made from tip top brown leather. Every lady there from a three year old to a dowager duchess had on such boots. I had a bright green walking cagoule on too. Oh no...tweed or quilted jackets were de rigueur.

 

I quite liked the look and was quite tempted. But soon realised that to walk the children to school in suburban Manchester in such garb would look a tad out-of-place. It might do though for a walk over the local fields and hills so am very tempted by some boots.

Anyway  a good time was had by all. The veg were beyond my imagination but I reckon that my lemon drizzle cake would have stood a good chance of coming first in the lemon drizzle cake competition. I'm tempted to enter next year and deliver my cakes in sandals and cagoule.