Podward

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I was offered a shopping trip at the weekend with the chance to load up my wardrobe. However I failed to take full advantage of the offer, I got a preserving pan, a thermometer and a new table cover for the kitchen table. All the Christmas stodge is still a heavy presence in my life, mostly tucked in behind my waistband, so buying clothes is not the joy that it could be so I went for a more domestic theme. I have been wanting a preserving pan for many months. I had a huge array of rose hips last year that I wanted make into jelly which is what started the thought rolling.

I had to make a batch of chutney the next day after I got my pan and as I didn’t really have much in the way of garden produce – it being winter and there being little apart from dead stalks in my garden – I used up some leftovers. A couple of almost-manky onions, some cooking apples I forgot I had and a whole bunch of dried fruit left over from the Christmas bake-out. The girlie had bought two big bags of dried cranberries and I never thought I would shift the second bag but, hey, it went in the chutney, problem sorted. It was very satisfactory chutney.

In so few ways am I cut out to be an ordained minister’s wife but I can maybe contribute some preserves!

We arrived at mother’s on Sunday evening, let ourselves in with the key and were immediately transfixed by a bleeping - an insistent and persistent bleeping. We probed around for a stray mobile or something, in vain. It was in fact a toy mouse that was hidden away in the under-stairs cupboard, one of those that makes a high pitched squeak when tossed or teased, which had got stuck in squeak mode and they couldn’t turn it off. After whacking it few times someone had the bright idea of wedging some card into it to interrupt the circuit. It worked

It’s the sort of thing that could drive one to the brink of insanity. We used to have a carbon monoxide monitor of a similarly mind-destroying disposition. Some accident had befallen it and it blipped. And blipped. And blipped. Some minutes between blips obviously just to crank up the irritation factor. It had to be put out in the utility room. We could still hear it. It went out to the shed and in the summer it made it’s presence felt out there in the garden. It went out to the garage. We could still hear it. I tried a hammer, it didn’t work. I don’t remember what happened to it in the end; I think it might have gone to the tip….where it is probably continuing its mission.

I had a cold, that’s all.

And compared with some of the colds I have seen doing the rounds it wasn’t even a very impressive cold. I have seen this nasty cold thing in other people going on and on for weeks and weeks, reinventing itself and going back for a second , third and even fourth assault like a persistent little terrier attacking the postman’s leg. I haven’t, touch wood, been so severely afflicted, and it didn’t really make me feel ill - although I could have done without the worst of the symptoms hitting me on the day I was supposed to be narrating for the church pantomime. C’est typique.

But not by any stretch of the imagination have I been nearly as under the weather as my housemates. Hubby, of course, being a man would have to have it worse than the two women but to be fair he was quite bad and didn’t go sick from work at all – I bet his colleagues were really chuffed. As for the girlie, she is into her second month of bunged-uppedness while I am pretty okay. But for some strange reason my failure to attend a function seemed to suggest to people that I was very ill. In hushed tones people were approaching my mother to ask how ill I was. She was bemused and told them I had a cold. But then why wasn’t I there that night? I was in fact out at a post-Christmas Christmas Meal and not feeling remotely unwell.

Still it’s nice to know that people were concerned and caring.

There’s a whole lot of January going on at the moment. It is very cold, there’s not a lot going on, we’re in the middle of economic despair, the nights are still way too long and there is a creeping lethargy eating into my days. Oh, and I, like a large proportion of the population, have a lingering cough. So basically there’s not a lot of fun going down at the moment. The heating system which has toddled along perfectly ok for 12 years is falling apart. The old boiler wheezed and choked its way through all the last decade of milder than seasonal winters patiently waiting until we have a long drawn out cold snap to inflict its demise on us. We’ve had our money’s worth out of it, it has barely cost us a penny since we moved in but it is time to upgrade. We plan to have a new boiler, system, and radiators, a real big job in fact, major upheaval – in April. The wee girlie will be complaining bitterly all the way through the next couple of months so in addition to it being cold we have to contend with the daily tirade from herself as well. Roll on Spring………please.

In the process of discussing with our heating engineer what we want to do the subject came up of moving house. How long do we plan to stay here? Hubby looks at me quizzically or perhaps hopefully. I said I didn’t think we were planning on moving at the moment. As he has just embarked on this process of training for ordination, and the training will probably start in the autumn at the same time as the wee girlie goes off to uni, I really don’t see that moving is going to be a sensible option for some time – this is aside from the fact that the housing market is currently pretty crap anyway. As he is being trained through his parish he will be obligated to the church for a while even when he has finished his training so we are looking at a minimum of another five years in situ. So why do we want to move house! All that upheaval and stress. We’ve just had a lovely new kitchen, new windows and re-decorated. I feel like pointing out that although the next few years will be quite new and exciting for the two of them it will just be more of the same old same old for me. That’s not to say that I haven’t considered a change!

I regularly take stock but I have found that it is sometimes easier in life to alter your attitude and re-learn to appreciate what is here and now rather than hunt for the greener grass on the other side of the fence. It isn’t any greener; it is only your perception of it that makes it appear so.

The fifty most annoying…..

Yes, do let’s concentrate on all those irritating little whatevers in life and put them in a list and go over them and dwell on how irritating they are so that we can stamp our little foots and grind our teeth and generally make ourselves more irritated. Quite frankly who needs it! Do we need to dwell on life’s little annoyances any more than usual? We are bombarded with grumpy old men and grumpy old women on TV talking about their pet peeves – I ask you, do we need to watch this on TV, the supermarkets are full of them grousing on about something or other. We are putting complaining and grumbling right up there among our favourite national pastimes and how better to salute this sport of sports than by giving ever more TV coverage!

Oh, sorry I was just reading something on a webpage somewhere that started a train of thought.

I have discovered iPlayer now, I’m slow to get on board with things but every now and then I try to catch up. It was essential to catch up with some of the Christmas goodies and iPlayer was only way! We had the mother-in-law to stay over Crimbo and unless the programmes had Poirot or Marple or Barnaby in they weren’t favoured viewing. I’m not sure why I missed Jonathan Creek though, perhaps I was out. However, I managed to catch up with it last night. I keep going over the whole tank of water-with-the-bodies scenario, it haunts me, but other than that there were quite a few queries I had about the plot. For example why did no one at any stage call the police? Spending a night in a strange place one’s friend is not only locked up in a strange attic room, but in the morning she has completely disappeared, does this not at any point the next day alarm one enough to perhaps call the police. After another day or so would one not start to feel even more anxious about her disappearance rather than forget her very existence in the story? When it finally emerges that this poor creature has been tipped into an ancient escape-proof water tank to drown amongst a bundle of long dead corpses does nobody think that it might now be time to call the police? This girl presumably has some friends and relatives that might notice she has not come home, been into work, facebooked or paid the bills in several days. HALLO-O-O? I mean clearly her part was only a cameo but surely…..

I was in the town with my mother the other day and she suggested going into Woolworths to look at the reduced stuff. Half the store was already blocked off and empty. The place was full of people scouring the shelves for a few pre-Christmas bargains but it felt like we were all picking over the carcass of a dead animal. I felt quite stifled and repulsed and had to get out. Our little Woolworths was somewhere I shopped quite frequently because there is nowhere else quite like it, certainly not here. Ok so Tesco do a lot of the same stuff but it is a two mile hike down there and I could do Woolworths on my way home from work, or on a walk to town, far more easily. At the end of November it’s always been first port of call for little things to stuff in the pockets of the advent calendar, in the summer the little garden centre bit helped me find odd and sods for the garden without having to go out of town for the full garden centre works, and I could always be sure of getting a banana or shrimp fix in the pick’n’mix if the mood came upon me. I have been to Woolies for all sorts of everyday stuff from last minute birthday presents to bowls for the cat to eat out of, fabric dye to fairy lights, seeds for the garden to sweets for a rainy day. I bought my little cherry tree from Woolies several years ago and it is established and frothy with snowy blossom in the spring. A couple of years ago when we were trying to create some outdoor lights I managed to get some utensil holders in Woolies which we nailed onto posts and put tea lights in them. This year we needed to replace a knackered garden bench and toddled off to Woolies to get a small cheap one because the garden centre ones were either to big or too pricey. I always knew I could find something in there and I shall miss the familiarity and reassurance of its presence.

I had to work last Saturday morning – well, ‘had to’ is a bit strong, I am down to work one Saturday in 7 or something but I could have opted out if I’d wished to. Since the government decided that doctors should be available more often we now have a surgery on Saturday mornings. Only for pre-booked appointments though, we don’t have people just wandering in off the street. And because we have extra surgery hours we have to have extra staff hours to cover it so we were encouraged to volunteer, even those of us who don’t actually have any truck with reception work as a rule. I think my name was put in without my really agreeing one way or another but since it gives me a chance to work at grass roots level again I don’t have any objection. Officers mucking in with the foot soldiers don’t ya know, what what..

Anyway my Saturday came around. Wild and wet and windy it was on Saturday and the last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed so I guess I probably wasn’t at my peak. The first thing I did at work was to shut myself in the porch, on the wrong side of the door entry system and the keys on the other side of the door. ‘Oh bother’ I said to myself, or words to that effect. I felt very silly obviously, standing in a small porch with a locked door either side of me, glass doors and windows onto the street so any passer-by would be able to see me stuck in my waterless goldfish bowl. Mortification, and all that. I didn’t expect to be in there long as I expected my colleague to arrive any moment, and I would have to explain, red-faced what I had done. If only. It would of course happen the week that she forgot she was working a Saturday and therefore didn’t arrive to aid me. I was in there for half an hour and, oh the ignominy of it all, it wasn’t her that let me out it was the combined efforts of the first patient and the duty doctor. I won’t live this one down for a while.

Lesson learned. Always carry a bag I can put over my head!

It all happened on the same day hubby got his news about his Deacon training. He has been approved and can go forward. Life throws these strange curves at you now and then. Only think what this means for my two babes - which has the greater street-cred annihilation factor, a morris-dancing mother or a dog-collared father?

This week I ave mostly been making trees...

Unfinished as yet and a little smaller than most.

I don't have any more space for trees, current total being 13, so I have had to take some to work where they are scattered around empty desks.

It's a phase, it'll pass, I expect...

Life seems to be in bags at the moment.

I have a collection of four bags hanging on the chair in my bedroom – there could be more but it isn’t a large chair.

• There is my swimming bag which I use on Fridays - contains the shampoo, deodorant, goggles and hair stuff.

• There is a Morris bag which I use on Thursdays – contains sticks and wavers

• There is a waterproof handbag for use on rainy days, of which there have been a few lately.

• There is a bag with my singing stuff in which I use whenever we do that – contains song lyrics, a maraca (singular), throat sweets and chewing gum.

Of course that’s only on the chair, in addition to those there are a few other bags.

• Another Morris bag which I use on Tuesdays – contains longer sticks and various handouts.

• A bag with all my committee meeting papers in – a nice Morgan bag actually.

• A bag of props for the Murder Mystery which we are going to be doing again soon so it isn’t worth taking the stuff out yet.

• There is a little handmade (by my sister) bag which I use for my lunch.

• Plus of course my handbag – don’t get me started on the contents of that or we’ll be here all day.

I’m always leaving the house with a bag of one sort or another!