Murder on the Balcony!

They were almost ready to leave home. The family had been trying to encourage them to move out.
And then the door to their home seemed to have been widened despite working so hard to reduce it when they’d all returned in the spring… and two little bodies were huddled together on the balcony, dead, and we wondered what could have happened.


The following evening, watching from the front door, the adults had at last returned home and were watching from their doorway. The next moment in swoops a noisy neighbour who grabs an adult by the scruff of the neck and throws it out! It would seem the culprit had been found and there was rivalry and murder on our balcony!


We don’t know whether the swallows will start another brood, but they have set to work on a new nest a couple of feet from the old one. And I don’t think the house sparrows will ever be cute again!

Rain altered plans

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:

Visit London!

Now what shall we tell I’m Crayon to do in London when she’s only over for a week?
She’s staying in Grosvenor Square, which sounds pretty posh to me, and on the doorstep of everything. (She’s already in the country so it may well be too late, but she may check in!)

If you can run to a show of some sort I’m sure you ought to see something. I don’t think it matters whether it’s theatre, ballet, opera or a concert, but see something you should! London will offer you food from pretty much anywhere in the world so you must make sure to eat something specifically local even if it’s only a full English breakfast; or perhaps a cream tea, given the time of year.
And walk the streets! Take a tube certainly, because they’re unique, but just connecting places and people-watching on foot is fun. (And you probably need a ride in a black cab just so you can say you have been in one.) At least one of the parks: Regent’s to see roses or the zoo – or the open air theatre is a great outing if there’s something on when you visit. Or Hampstead Heath perhaps; it’s further out but the views from the top of Parliament Hill are terrific and it’s lovely to wander around. You could combine it with a trip to Camden Lock to look at the market which I wrote about in an earlier post.
I always love Covent Garden: heaving with tourists, but buzzing with interesting shops, street entertainers and eateries.
At least one art gallery too. Depends whether you like art as to which one! I prefer a museum myself: the Victoria and Albert, as it happens, because I love the costumes. When I was a student I spent hours wandering around looking at the furniture and judging everything on whether or not I’d give it houseroom. But the National Gallery can be ticked off at the same time as Trafalgar Square, Horse Guard’s, Parliament, Admiralty Arch, Buckingham Palace and the Changing of the Guard. I think they’re essential and traditional! (I'm rather hoping you may have managed the Trooping of the Colour today.) You’ll be exhausted, but you can walk between all of those easily.

I love London. I lived in Woolwich for a couple of years (twice) with my parents, and then in Highbury, Islington, as a student at the London College of Fashion. My parents now live in their own home in south east London (they might tell you it used to be Kent). They reckoned it was a good place to settle as we’d always want to visit Town: they were right! I still get a buzz from central London despite my love of my present, rural life.


It may well be too late for I’m Crayon, but I rather enjoyed thinking about what to tell her. Hope she had fun!

Half-term treats

Deepest Dorset

Flowery garden, Dorset

 Flowery garden, by my pond

Avebury

And it’s still not finished!

But the classes have, so I'm on my own until September...

Tales out of school

I spent my last year of primary school boarding. In those far off days, before mobile phones and e-mail, we were required to write home once a week. In the junior school said letter had to be handed in to matron unsealed. Once we got to the secondary part of the school we only had to produce the envelope and show a letter before sealing it up and handing it over, and by the third year you just handed over a sealed envelope. But as a 10/11 year old my letters were read. Mother replied weekly with her news. Legend has it that she still has my letters; I’m sad to report that I didn’t keep her newsy everyday chats, though I kept Father’s as he wrote very rare, often sentimental missives.

At weekends we were always taken for walks, and sometimes these involved a trip on a bus to somewhere. On one memorable occasion we were taken on a coach trip to a pine wood and given permission to roam. When it came time to go back to school a number of girls were unable to be found. I do not recall (more than forty years on!) whether they were genuinely lost or behaving badly, but I do know that teacher’s stayed behind while we were sent back to school and they were found. I have no doubt that it frightened the life out of the teachers and that we all found it very exciting! So, of course, my letter home included this adventure. It was the first and only time that I was summoned to account for myself to the Housemistress’ study. The relevant pages had to be rewritten before my letter could be sent home. Generally I enjoyed writing letters and wrote detailed, decorated pages. On this occasion it must have been clear to my parents that my letter had been altered, and I’ve no doubt that I told them all about the missing girls when I next saw them, but I expect it was right not to worry them.
So it is with a certain hesitation that I commit the following account to the ether: please don’t decide your children cannot be allowed to go on school trips, it is character forming and terrific for their independence (and they will dine out on the stories for years!). And, for the record, no one was actually out of range of teaching assistance, the teachers just weren’t interfering.


You may remember that Husband had to go and learn how to camp and map read so that he could help out with DofE at school (and that 30 years in the Army didn’t count). Well, he’s been on his first adventure - after several weeks of preparation after school for the children (and teachers). He went off on Friday evening with a rucksack full of kit and rations. A phone call from the comfort of his tent that night says the whole thing was a hoot: the children (from14 up) had to walk a mile and a half then set up camp and eat their supper. It took one of the groups 3 hours to do the walk as their map reading didn’t go well; and the food brought didn’t necessarily lend itself to camp cooking conditions. (I have clearly been very lucky to have the combined knowledge of a camping Husband and Brownie/Guide experience to help inform what I have sent on Dof E camp!) It was a practice, not the assessment, and the whole point is to check what they don’t know and then help them get sorted for the real thing. For instance, one group hadn’t turned up for the session on how to put up a tent. While this event is not about leaving them to suffer, on the assessment the teachers are not allowed to help. Ditto the lad who couldn’t work the tin opener to get at his supper, and the girl who had never struck a match…. On the Saturday they trekked with all their kit, and this too had issues re map reading. Of the nine groups taking part six managed to achieve their goal. They all have some work to do before the Bronze assessment!


Youngest has also been off camping. She went for two nights away with her Switzerland crew practicing camping and walking (and bonding) for their trip in August. There are eleven of them; the three in charge are late teens and early twenties, leading for the first time. She came home tired but happy and the only real information I got was that she’d had porridge for breakfast both days and was very much looking forward to a pain au chocolat on Monday!


In their absence Eldest and I did rather more playing on the internet (her chess, me surfing) and fighting (nicely) over whose turn it was to play Mahjong on Husband’s new computer (we don’t have it on ours) than was perhaps appropriate. She’s revising for her AS levels and I expect I was doing something useful around the house or gardening really…

May I recommend?

Thank-you Countrymummy over at projectforty (and on my sidebar) for kindly giving me this award. I googled it to see what I could find. It seems all I have to do is pass on the award and though I haven’t managed to find the origins of the Liebster Award, I’ve found a number of posts about it. They vary regarding numbers, and it does seem it is about those following numbers (and mine are small but, of course, perfectly lovely). So I may be supposed to tag 3 or 3-5 bloggers who have fewer than 100 followers, or fewer than 300, or a ‘small’ blog…
So I propose that you should check out I'm Crayon who is scribbling 'a completely pointless, nubby little blog' that always makes me smile; Fran at being me who has lots of followers and may not need an award but is one of my favourite ports of call (but has recently suggested she may give up blogging!) and has a wonderful take on the meaning of English; and thirdly why not visit wylye girl whose tales are marvelous.
I would add that they should none of them feel obliged to accept or pass on this award as I'm usually the break in the chain of chain e-mail that demands I pass it on to my friends, but I was far too chuffed (I'm trying not to think 'pathetic') at being given an award to fail in this instance!

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Were you gripped a few weeks ago by the serial that was South Riding but perhaps a little puzzled by character motivation? The girls and I loved it, but we did wonder why some things happened. Well, having just read Winifred Holtby’s eponymous book I’m staggered at just how much Andrew Davies managed to get into only three hour long episodes, and I’d thoroughly recommend getting in touch with the characters’ inner thoughts!
Written and set in the 1930s it is surprisingly modern. A fascinating study of character, it is also a good yarn: believable, with loose ends, rather than neatly tied in a happy ending format. There are further strands to those in the TV series, but even those you think you know are further explored and embroidered with a cast of characters that cover the spectrum of people you’d expect to find in a (fictional) rural area in Yorkshire. The machinations of the local council, the wheels within wheels of social life and the hardship of simply living through the 1930s are intricately observed. Themes like women’s place in society, health, housing, the welfare state and schooling are all touched upon, but always as part of the story and how they affect the people.
Short chapters with titles made it a page turner too: an all round good read.

Chief Cook

Oh it’s been mad here lately, but, what you can’t tell from where you’re sitting is: I am on-line on my very own internet connected computer! (It's not connected to the printer yet but you can't have everything.)

So we’ll brush over my recent inactivity, writing-wise (I don’t suppose you think fete advertisements count?) and get down to the business of recording life in my little rural idyll.
On Sunday we had old friends to lunch. A traditional family affair, with a roast leg of lamb and rhubarb trifle, followed by a walk along the river, through the allotments and back up the glebe field and home for tea and carrot cake. As I stripped the joint and chopped the leftover vegetables, boiled up the bones for stock and assembled the base of a shepherd’s pie for supper later in the week I had one of those flashbacks.
Roast lamb with onion sauce and homemade mint jelly is a meal I completely associate with my grandmother’s home in Hythe. It’s not that I haven’t eaten it throughout my life, it is just Granny who I picture mincing cold roast lamb in one of those enormous metal contraptions that had to be screwed to the vicarage kitchen table and fed through the top – being careful to keep your fingers out of the way.. and cleaned through with a crust of stale bread afterwards come to think of it. Why I was particularly struck last night was because that is no longer how I make shepherd’s pie – though I used to use the whizzy machine and it’s efficient blade for ‘mincing’. I never met my mother-in-law, she died unexpectedly and rapidly of cancer a few months before I met Husband, but I was very soon told that her version of said pie was better than mine. I have learnt to chop the meat and vegetables so that you can still see what’s what, and to add a good spoonful of pickle (apparently it should be Branston but adding my own is now accepted).Roast lamb always comes with carrots and peas so clearly they can go in along with any left over roast potatoes, the gravy and onion sauce.
Topped with freshly made mashed potatoes and baked in the oven to heat through and crisp the top it is a perfect supper dish! Tonight. When Clergyuncle, who is visiting, will be joining us. I wonder if he will agree that my mother-in-law’s version is better than his mother’s?!