A happy pinta

We have our milk delivered. On four mornings a week two pints of milk and on Fridays some eggs too are left outside 88 under the hedge. They are left by Graham the milkman at some god-awful time in the morning and placed into a little wooden box, subdivided into six that my dad made me five years ago. One of the six compartments is slightly too tight for a milk bottle - it must annoy Graham when he has to gently nudge the empty bottle out of that section on a frosty dark morning.

I open the door and bring in the two pints. No tetra packs or plastic bottles for us. I duly pop my empties back out for Graham to collect. There's a cycle, a rhythm to the doorstep delivery.  And on Thursdays at 3.25pm practically on the dot Graham collects his money and we have a little chat and put the world to rights.

I have a history with milk. My dad was a dairy farmer and at one point a milkman. He would milk the cows and then go out and deliver the green top unpasteurised milk. I have two milk bottles as an heirloom to prove it. He stopped in the seventies actually delivering milk but I can still remember him bringing me an aero chocolate bar, a Jack and Jill comic and my mum a Turkish Delight after he'd finished deliveries on a Saturday morning. I drank milk morning, noon and night.

I can remember as a 5 year old helping my Dad heave two big silver churns full of the excess milk on the back of his green Morris pick-up van, drive up the lane and roll the two cans on a flat slab of stone on a wall by the main road, awaiting the big dairy to collect them. Then modern life hit and we had to install a bulk tank and the milk tanker would rumble up the drive for the extra milk and the magic was lost.

Support a British institution. Support your milkman....milkwoman...milkperson!

The Indispensables

Happy Valentines .....and moving swiftly on.....

I wrapped a present today and unexpectedly I didn't get tangled and mangled with the sellotape. My big solid sellotape dispenser that I bought in the January sales has transformed my life. I love it. A little love affair with a sticky tape dispenser. Pull the tape and with a simple downward motion you have a neat little piece of the sticky stuff. No lost ends, no wishing you had a third hand. Faithful to the sticky end.

It got me thinking what other non electrical gadgets do I have in the house at 88 which enhance my life. What little domestic love affairs make life sweet? What are my indispensables?

My airer or Sheila's Maid is my number one love. I lay wet washing over it's horizontal wooden poles and pull the pulley, leave it high and there to dry. I can't resist shouting 'Hoist the main sail' as I pull on the rope to heave ho it upwards. No need to waste electricity on a drier. I love it. It is so simple. No hanging pots and pans and dried flowers from my airer. It's there for the fundamental reason of drying.

The only downfall is that although it's in a great position over a long radiator which dries the clothes quickly, that position is in the walking path of everyone who enters the kitchen. Tall bodies have to duck and weave the towels and long and short bodies alike get a look at the family's underwear. Kind of a variation of airing your dirty laundry in public except it's clean and we don't have too many scandals to air. Very unromantic.

I don't get that many letters nowadays other than bills and certainly no love declarations. When I do receive a handwritten missive I get quite excited. I use my wrought iron letter opener, shaped at the top in a heart. My friend bought it for me a long time ago and I love it. It's an over used phrase by William Morris but nevertheless a good one: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This is useful and beautiful. It elegantly rips through the top of the envelope and I dip in for my letter. I unfold it. I feel I'm in the golden olden days, opening a letter sent from some far away continent. I've just put down my buttered toast at breakfast after the butler has brought the post in on a silver salver, dressed in my beautiful crinoline.....that is I am in the dress and not a cross-dressing butler....that is not a cross but probably a very happy butler... intriguing thoughts.

What are your favourite love of your life, non-electrical domestic life enhancers?

Mine's with golden syrup

How do you take your pancake? I don't want to hear about any savoury fillings ....you can keep your smoked salmon and cream cheese fillings and your baked pancakes in a creamy mushroom and cheese sauce. There is a time and a place. Those are probably delicious but not for Shrove Tuesday. You can also keep your American pancakes with maple syrup, bacon and blueberries for breakfast on Sundays (delicious). No Pancake Day is about thin, golden flecked pancakes, tossed into the air from the pan and then lain gently onto a plate for immediate scoffing.

It's about the children and grown-ups queueing up for their next pancake and the cook chained to the cooker, pouring the batter into the frying pan and teasing it around til it's ready to flip. At 88 I pour the batter into the hot pan with a tea cup simply because my mum always used a cup. The first pancake is usually a disaster and by the third or fourth I have built the courage up to somersault the pancake using only a flick of the wrist. When everyone has eaten and I am about to eat my pancake, David takes over and does the next round of pancakes. He is a consummate flipper. And there is always someone who will be there right to the end to eat the very last pancake.

I take my pancakes with golden syrup because that was how I had them as a child. The children have them with maple syrup and David has them with lemon and sugar although this year he combined golden syrup with a little lemon juice quite successfully. My brother was here tonight so joined us for the pancake feast. He like me enjoys golden syrup but insisted that the golden syrup had to come out of a green and golden tin and not a plastic easy pour bottle. You see traditions can be very complex.

Finally do you roll or not? I don't simply because I think my pancake lasts a bit longer even as I scoff away but to David it's much more of a patient construct, spreading the syrup and squeezing the lemon and then gently rolling the pancake to get layers of flavour. If truth be told I think David was just a tad disappointed this year that we had real lemons and not a small plastic lemon shaped opaque bottle on the table. Clearly what you put on your pancakes is important but the receptacle from whence that topping comes is just as crucial.  Everyone has their ways and these are ours.

Coastering along

To coaster or not to coaster? That is the question. Well it's not actually a question at all at 88. It's a given. A no-brainer. Where you find a cup in our household you will find a coaster under it. Just like lamb and mint, strawberries and cream, jam and butter, you will find glass and mat at 88. Just as I now find I cannot say 'kid' ,  I cannot place a cup filled with liquid down on a wooden surface without a coaster. Burn marks and water stains you will not find here.

And why not? We have a wooden coffee table and a wooden dining table and to stain them would be careless and unappreciative of the work gone into producing them. A blight on their beauty. Ugly to gaze upon. Ungrateful to the trees, felled for their wood.

My mum taught me about the efficacy of the mat and now my children would no more pop a drink down without a coaster than pull their teeth out. Actually that's not quite true. They are at that age where wobbly teeth are two a penny....actually £1 for one lost tooth... so they have been known to tease a dangling tooth out to improve their piggy bank balance.

I have super human skills when it comes to coastering. If a guest pops a hot coffee down on the wooden surface without a mat, I'm in there with consummate speed. Cup up, coaster under, cup down, back in chair, conversation continued. I remember once my brother's girlfriend put a teapot straight down on my parent's oak dining table when noone was looking (obviously if I'd witnessed this I'd have been in there teapot up, mat under, teapot down, bob's your uncle). Oh the carnage. We've barely got over the shock til this day.

So beware oh honoured guest when you come to 88, you are most most welcome but woe betide you if you coast along without using a coaster.

.

Little dragon

I'd like to wish our friends Jennie and Kai in Hong Kong and Dawn in England a Happy Chinese New Year for tomorrow.

Apparently it will be the year of the snake. I was born in the year of the snake a long long time ago. Chinese snakes or small dragons as they are also known are not sly and mean like western serpents but charming, passionate, intellectual, intuitive, attractive...oh I could go on. Wouldn't it be lovely to have all those attributes. Feel free, my friends and family, to attest to these glorious qualities in me in the comments section - now don't be shy. I find it all quite fascinating.

Snakes value their privacy, have excellent manners, get easily bored, don't like noisy environments and are passionate about friends and family. Other than the fact I'm writing a blog (where's the privacy in that) I do insist on good table manners from my children, I do get bored easily, I prefer quiet to loud and I do think a lot about the people in my life. Oh yes and we like to be in control - only now do my friends and family want to pipe up in the comments section! It's all quite uncanny.

We are not averse to lies if we think we can get away with it (don't believe everything you read in this blog) and we like the good life (let me take another sip of champagne). We can also get very stressed if things aren't going well (please please 'follow' this blog). It's all true.

One of the snake's lucky numbers is 8 which is cool. I was born on the 8th, I live at 88, I used to live at 8, I'm married to someone born in the 8th month. I believe '8' anyway is a lucky number in Chinese culture so here's hoping.

Oh and although it's really best if a snake hooks up with an ox or a rooster, a horse will do. That's a relief.

Happy Chinese New Year

Mmmmmm on buttered bread

Just had our little batch of harvested oyster mushrooms on fresh bread at 88.

Melt a knob of butter in a pan, add some garlic and a little squirt of anchovy paste (magic ingredient). Let this froth away for a minute or two and then add harvested mushrooms, toiled over for a month, spraying and talking to and watching. Ok this may work with bought mushrooms too. Also add a bit of thyme with a sprinkle of pepper and just a tad of salt. Cook til mushrooms done. Breathe in that delicious aroma. Just at the end throw in a splash of cream and let that bubble for a minute. Serve on buttered fresh bread, untoasted, and most importantly eat with fingers. Mmmmm...not bad.

Actually I think everything tastes better eaten with your fingers. Fish and chips, cream cakes, pizza, a chicken leg, even a curry with a good supply of chapatis. I seem to have invested and perhaps put in that little bit more effort if I eat with fingers. It's that bit more primitive and you also get to lick them. But shhh.. don't tell the children.

Garden inheritance

We have a very big garden. We love it. We are not very good gardeners but we are learning.

My mum's house with beautiful garden (the farm), her home for nearly 60 years, was sold recently. My home physically until I was eighteen and I think spiritually for a long time there after was sold. It's a sad and reflective time for the family.

I have quite a few friends going though similar experiences. One of them was telling me how she spent an arduous afternoon digging up a peony from her mum and dad's garden before it was sold. Her mum had originally brought it from her mum's so it seemed kind of important to continue with that line of descent. It was huge, dug up on a hot afternoon and then transported 300 miles up the motorway, sat on the passenger seat, belted of course. But it was worth it. She can now see the green shoots of recovery - quite literally.

So with that green inheritance in mind I walked round our garden at 88. I noticed the daffodils, peeping up through the grass. I made a mental note to tell the children not to stand on them while their little shoots were still camouflaged amongst the blades of grass. My Dad planted hundreds of daffs along the banking up the drive to the farm and at the end of the garden. Every spring the drive welcomed you in yellow.

I admired our rowan tree that we planted as a spindly whip about three years ago and how big it's got already. My Mum and I bought Dad a rowan when he retired from farming. He then proceeded to complain every year thereafter that the berries were a browny yellow and not red. Funny thing but last autumn they at last turned red.

I looked at the azalea that Mum and Dad bought for us when our daughter was born. I was concerned last year that it did not flower but I have high hopes that it will burst into vibrant fuchsia pink again around about her birthday in April.

I smiled at the snowdrops up already and the whites of the petals just visible packed tightly into their buds. I remember my Mum urging me to dig up spent snowdrops at the farm for my own garden.

I sat in the garden chair in the cool winter sunshine that my Dad made for me. He had carved my name on the top and had done the same on chairs for the children. A friend always jokes with me that they are the Blakeley Family Inheritance Thrones.

 

I walked through the soggy grass. I love cutting grass. I started cutting the lawn at the farm, all those years ago as a teenager for pocket money. Up and down, up and down with the lawn mower, methodically comforting. I complain every year to David that our lawn mower doesn't make lovely lines in the grass. Well it will this year as we have inherited my mum's.

I have quite a few mementos from the farm around the house at 88, memory reminders of a time, a place, a feeling, a person. It would seem I have a huge green and living inheritance too.