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I thought of posting a picture of our new wood burner but it isn’t quite what I was expecting and has yet to produce the promised performance, largely due to our lack of suitably dry logs and middle-sized kindling. It turns out it is also a gadget and thus a Man’s Job to deal with. This is a Good Thing: I am no longer responsible for clearing out the old fire each morning and fetching in the wherewithal to relay the fire for the next night – I am restraining myself from sweeping the flags in front of the wood burner, mostly!
It is good to share, but sometimes it is useful to have clearly defined roles. Now that Husband is around all the time I am doing my best to not do jobs that need doing because, now he’s here, he can help. I am very capable of making work for myself by criticising the way other people do them; hence, for example, it is my job to fill the dishwasher as I can make the most efficient use of the space inside, sadly this means that it is therefore usually my job to empty it and put everything away! The good news is that I have started simply queuing items for the dustbins/recycling by the back door rather than delivering them to the appropriate container in the garage, and generally this works as the garage/greenhouse combination are this families equivalent of a shed, clearly a male domain. With most household tasks I blink first, no one else minds about the cleanliness/ tidiness/urgency of a chore as soon as I do – and my tolerance levels are fairly high (i.e. it has to be dirty, not just a while since it was cleaned).
We have friends coming to share a take-away curry supper with us this evening. Their house is always noticeably cleaner and tidier than ours. They both work and, I’m told, both do the housework – though she does all the cooking. When I suggested to Husband that we’d better run the vacuum round he said it would be good for Gunnerfriend to see how real people live… I may have to take Eldest shopping to avoid acting having noticed that the house needs work.
I’m a bit busy, and a bit excited. We are hosting a supper party tonight, in part to welcome old friends who moved into ‘our’ village last week. So I’m cleaning the parts of the house that show and preparing the meal.
Husband has, as ever, provided the cook with a few challenges from the allotment: I am the delighted owner of five marrows, five pumpkins and several kilos of green (and a few red) tomatoes, not to mention a freezer full of beetroot, raspberries and blackberries. This is lovely of course, but it does require thought and work so as not to waste it.
Thus, tonight’s supper, featuring a smoked salmon salad starter with beetroot, a chicken casserole cooked in a pumpkin and a blackberry ice-cream with a raspberry compôt should help reduce the glut.
Many moons ago, when we were first married, Husband, a confident chap, was unexpectedly reduced to nerves by the arrival as his new boss of someone who had bullied him as his superior when a young officer. I proposed a campaign! We invited the bully and his wife to supper with a gang of our most presentable friends (who were warned) and I cooked the supper of my life. The centre piece, recommended by one of said friends as what to cook when you needed to impress, was Prize Pumpkin. It is a Josceline Dimbleby recipe that is perfectly simple to make, but brings gasps of surprise from guests. It is now a staple in this house: if you come to supper when pumpkins are in season it’s what you get! I don’t suppose it was the only reason the bully turned out not to be a problem, but he was effusive in his praise on the occasion, and Husband was much relieved.
So that is exciting, but the real reason is that Eldest has given permission for us to visit her. We are to take her out to lunch on Sunday.
I have no time for posting so I don’t know what I think I’m doing here!
The builders have been in making alterations to our garden. The plan was pretty much made when we moved in, but it has only just reached the top of the list of ‘things to do when we’ve saved some cash’. They started two weeks ago and have now done their bit of it though we await the delivery of some iron railings to replace the wall, and a greenhouse, which Husband is going to put up… I am thinking of, but not rushing into, planting plans. Part of me thinks it would be nice to have a flat piece of grass: the whole garden slopes down to the house; it’s not a major slope as we had in a quarter once, but nevertheless it presents challenges. There’ll be plants to move and places to beautify even if we do go for lawn.
And look what I’ve made!
Very pleased with this revived chair: it is functional rather than beautiful, but always useful to have an extra chair to hand and it will sit happily in our bedroom draped with clothes in the meantime.
I hosted the village coffee morning on Wednesday (mentioned last week). It provides a vital push to make me clean and tidy the house (or at least the bits that show) and we’ve got visitors for Sunday lunch too so it needed doing.
Produce from the plot is slowing down, but the apples on our tree are still coming down faster than we can pick them, never mind use them: I really must make some chutney!
And half-term starts tonight for the girls; Husband has to wait another week.
It is my last day at home alone until September and I have failed to decide what to do with it.
There are, of course, many useful chores I could do around the house and garden but that seems rather a waste of the day. I could tidy up, but since they'll all be on holiday from the end of today the house will no doubt be a mess again by bedtime. I could do the laundry, but that multiplies daily, so tomorrow would do. The front patio needs weeding, it's pots dead-heading and the pyracantha pruning, but I could do that over the weekend when I need to escape the house. There's work to do in the back garden too, but I probably won't get to it today. My list of rooms that need decorating hasn't got shorter this (academic) year, so there's no point starting that now. And my re-upholstering of the dining-room chairs has come to a halt for no reason other than that I'm being lazy. A nice man cleaned my windows yesterday (at vast expense) so it would be sensible to do the insides, but I'm rubbish at windows... The trouble with hausfrau tasks is that they rarely have a permanent solution: they always need doing again!
Husband still has a piece of written work to complete before Bath University can sign him off as a newly qualified teacher, and Eldest is helping run a summer school at her ballet school all next week, so Youngest and I will be able to have some time together shopping for the other twos' birthdays. So no need to shop today.
I may just idle around the blogosphere, listening to Radio 4... I'll need another coffee, and I expect there's a chocolate chip muffin somewhere.
I’ve little to report from my corner of Wiltshire, busy but not blog-inspiring.
The village fete was a great fundraiser but not quite the party it usually is – apparently the first time it had rained on the night in 30 years! Since then I’ve been sorting leftovers and thanking helpers and trying to make headway in the house- and garden-tidying stakes: both somewhat neglected in favour of fete business, and I had friends coming to supper on the patio on Saturday evening.
I like planning ‘proper’ food. It’s not that I don’t make from scratch for the family, it’s that they all have their own particular likes and dislikes so that the variety of cooking required (or that I can be bothered with) is dull… I like thinking about what’s in season, what I can serve for free from the allotment, and what will go together nicely without anyone feeling hungry or over-stuffed at the end of the evening. Cooking for the family is also seasonal, but by the time Youngest's objected to vegetables, Husband to lack of joined up meat and Eldest to sauce that isn't ketchup....
We went with Plan B since, as last weekend, it rained. We ate indoors surrounded by still dripping flowers retrieved from the garden. It was fun!
So, in the absence of words I bring you highlights from My Garden:
I’ve been doing quite a bit of sewing lately. Last seen delivering prom dresses, more recently I've been measuring up for some outdoor seat cushions and being asked whether I’d consider making cushions for someone to sell on E-Bay, or perhaps sell something for myself. (I still don’t think I could command the money needed to make it interesting to be making the same thing over and over.) As Likeminded friend-from-round-the-corner discovered when she came to play with me: I’m not always capable of finishing projects I’ve got bored with. She and I talked about our collection of sewing machines and compared presser feet, we considered patterns, fabric and embroidery. It was all very pleasurable!
I’m getting very little time to myself. I’m still not used to having Husband round the house, and now I have Eldest as well. I love them both of course, but my routine is shot! I’m keeping on top of the washing but the cleaning and gardening are never really planned as such: I tend to do the thing that shows most in the hope that it will demonstrate that I have done some useful work rather than idle about in a novel or the Blogosphere. In fact I’ve barely been here of late, and probably won’t make it again until after Eldest’s birthday, family visits, Youngest’s Guide camp, Husband’s birthday and a holiday travelling along the Rhone.
If I don't make it back, have a great summer!
I’ve been shouting at the television. Has anyone else been able to stomach Women on BBC4?
I grew up in the 70s aware of the Women’s Liberation Movement and absolutely convinced of my right to be equal to any man. This does not mean I subscribe to some of the dottier things they did. I’ve generally thought my bra quite supportive even if I have wished for a smaller bust that wouldn’t need one – if only I was young enough not to find showing the straps acceptable!
Like the brave women who fought for the vote I applaud the ‘liberation’ of women. In my teens and twenties I had no interest in settling down with a man and a family; I was going to Save British Industry.
The first episode interviewed the chief activists (all mad according to A A Gill in the Sunday Times). The second interviewed a (very middle class professional) tiny set of mothers and their other halves about how they ran their marriages and who did what work. The key question seemed to be ‘In what way is your life different from that of a fifties housewife?’
It was at that point that I started to shout! The difference is that these women (and me too, being a middle class professional!) had chosen to lead the life they were leading. Some had given up work, but others were juggling work and family. There was some pointed stuff about who cleaned the bath, but little was made about the lower standards that we accept today. (Go on then: how many of you scrub your doorsteps, dust and vacuum daily?) And, since she was interviewing people with money, they all had washing machines and dishwashers. The hours my mum spent bent over her twin-tub, or my grandmother using her mangle, have been replaced by a machine that largely does the work while you do something else. The fifties housewife, of course, not only rarely did the sort of managerial work that a woman can do today, she also had to give up work if she married.
There’s a way to go! I’m not saying we’ve got equality. My adult life has been more different from my mother's than hers was of her mother's. I had a successful career and was on level pay with Husband when I gave up work to follow him to Germany. We had discussed our work and our wish to have children and made a conscious decision that he would support the family that I would bring up. As it happens Husband does a great deal more in the way of domestic chores and childcare than Father ever did. Regular readers will know that housework has never been of great interest to me. The things I do do are many and varied, but while Husband is bringing in the money it must be my task to spend it wisely… as well as do most of the chores.
Half-term beckons and we are off to the smoke to stay with my parents.
There will be dark mutterings afoot regarding the large piles of paper Father cannot throw away. When asked to sort them they move, but they never get any smaller. Mother is no more interested in cleaning than her daughter, but she’d like to present a tidy front.
Father’s complete failure to do any household chores has long been a bone of contention. As a teenager I was very aware, when I was home from boarding school, of just how rebellious Mother was feeling. Married in the late 1950s, and to an Army Officer, she gave up paid work to follow the drum. By the early 70s, with her children away at school, stuck in Germany expected to help run the wives club and entertain all and sundry, she was understandably kicking against her world. Her reading material reflected the times, I remember, and I’ll confess now to some concern for their marriage (they’ve done over 50 years now). She and I muttered about men in general – my brothers were equally lax in their contribution to household chores, despite pocket money incentives and tick charts. (Not surprising really when their bossy big sister made the charts and did most of the nagging.) What a goody goody they must have thought me taking on cleaning jobs, the family ironing and, the one I actually enjoyed, helping with the cooking. I have a vivid memory of piping cooked mashed egg yoke mixed with tomato ketchup into the halved hard boiled whites to serve at a buffet supper party – we had very sophisticated tastes in 1972.
There’ll be fish pie for supper when we get home, it’s tradition. My Granny made it with fresh coley. Mother makes it with fish in parsley sauce. I use frozen cod and make my own sauce. But the result is pretty similar.
It is ironic that it is only now, as I contemplate how the time I have with my girls will come to an end of sorts when they fly the nest, that I realise how my parents might feel. Do they mind that we’ve all gone, or are they proud that they managed it… of course they might just be glad to be rid of us and be pretty grumpy because they (well, Mother) feel bound to tidy up and make fish pie.
