Happy Easter

 Happy Easter to everybody.

We have had a lovely day today. We had an early morning communion service at church followed by breakfast. Then we had a music rehearsal for the main service which was a really uplifting one.. We were on breakfast detail so we were down at church by 7.20 so that we could get breakfast prepared - cereal, toast, boiled eggs for Easter and croissants. And coffee from the coffeeshop coffee machine. 

Since we were involved in the music rehearsal, I had got a "volunteer" to finish clearing up as there just was not enough time to do it all. I had expected people to disappear fairly quickly after the main service since it was Easter and lots of people were seeing family - but everybody wanted to stay and chat and have more coffee. Then we went to a friend's house for lunch, which was lovely especially after the early start and a full morning. So we were treated to a lovely Easter lunch and then sat and had a nice chat afterwards. I really enjoyed that : )

So tomorrow, Easter Monday, will have a leisurely start and then we are off to youngest grandson's 4th birthday party. I expect that we will enjoy that but I predict that we will also be glad to come home and put our feet up afterwards : )

Family woes

 Well it seems that I blinked and missed February because we are in March now. I still seem to be very busy with coffeeshop at church and did another large scale preparation of tomato and cheese pasta on Monday - all packed into two portion foil trays for the freezer. It is not quite as time consuming as the cottage pie or the lasagne but my back was complaining loudly by the time I was finished. 

Covid has been going around our family. First my eldest grandson had it (although he was asymptomatic) then a couple of weeks later his mum went down with it and was not too good. Then my younger daughter got it for the second time. She was really poorly. Unfortunately the test she did at home was positive but the one at the clinic was negative so her school said she had to come in because there were so many staff off ill. So having forced herself to cope with work for a whole week, she went down even harder than she should have. I am not impressed with that school. Her doctor said that indeed had covid and she was off for three weeks and is starting back on a 50% timetable for a week followed by a 75% timetable. Very little effort makes her feel like she has run a marathon so I hope she copes at school. While she was ill, youngest granddaughter went down with covid and was not very well with it. She was not as fortunate as her big brother. Then last week, not to be outdone by his cousins, youngest grandson went down with gastroenteritis. What a poorly lot! Thankfully the ones that started first are now a lot better although they have not got much energy - apart from eldest grandson who is absolutely fine.

I was in school yesterday invigilating an art exam - and getting paid for watching paint dry ..... : )

New Year woes and good things

 Christmas and the New Year feel like a long time ago now. We were meant to go to our elder daughter's for New Year's Day but the day before, small grandson had turned all spotty with chicken pox. He has now kindly passed this along to his dad who had escaped it as a child. Poor man! Our son's family has two members down with Covid but they are now on the road to recovery. The other family members seem to be escaping. Isn't it hard when you have a house full of people and bedrooms shared and then some go down with Covid. My son is sleeping on the bed settee which is not built for tall people like him.

Not to be left out of the sympathy stakes, I have had a heavy cold, my husband has had a funny bug and I have hurt my knee somehow and am hobbling around with a borrowed stick and feeling like a very old lady. What a family! I am discovering that it is not easy to walk around a supermarket with a stick because it keeps slipping on the tiled floors. I keep having to try to make the stick land on the joints between the tiles otherwise it doesn't provide any support at all. I have been trying not to walk too far and to rest my knee but I have had to go to a supermarket three times this year. One time, I called into Asda in the evening on the way to somewhere else and happened to be there when they brought out a trolley full of final reductions. Everything was reduced to 10p or 20p and I definitely came out of the shop with a smile on my face and a bag full of bread, broccoli, sausages, ham and yoghurts. And I spent a whopping £1.30 too : ) Fortunately there was just enough space in the freezer to put some of it away for the following week. It certainly cut the housekeeping bill for a couple of weeks.

Happy New Year!

 Wishing you all a happy and definitely healthier new year : )

We have had a peaceful week since Christmas. We had a lovely day at our daughter's on Christmas day with her family and other "older" relatives. (Our other daughter and our son got together so that the children were with each other.) My daughter's family are vegetarian and she had cooked a fabulous nut roast with brazil nuts and cranberries and various sorts of vegetables which were very posh and very very tasty. After we came home in the evening, my husband said that it was so good that he had not actually missed having meat. That is incredibly high praise!!

We went to our son's on Boxing Day and had a fun afternoon with our grandchildren. I do enjoy seeing them : ). We were supposed to go to our older daughter's yesterday for New Year's Day but smallest grandson went down with chicken pox on Friday so obviously the visit didn't happen. Apparently his nursery school has been quite literally decimated by chicken pox so this was a problem waiting to happen. Daughter is supposed to be going back to work this week so we are waiting to see what happens.

We have had a lovely break from coffeeshop duties but they are starting tomorrow again. I shall have to spend three days this week on coffeeshop instead of the usual two so I will be tired by the end of this coming week. However, I shall look back with pleasure on this week just ended as we have had a lovely rest and done practically nothing : )

New job title.

 I now have a new job title. All of us parents and grandparents have a myriad job titles as we try to cope with whatever life and children throw at us. But now I have a new one to add to my list. A couple of days ago, my two youngest granddaughters came to see me with an armful of teddies each and asked me to mend them. Neither of their parents is very good with a needle and thread so they came to me. Grandparents are obviously expected to be able to fill in any gaps in their parents' skill set. "Thank you Granny," they both said. "You are the best teddy vet ever." Tonight they came and collected their furry friends, who are all now hole free, and went home happy : )

Treats for Mum

 There was a knock at the door this afternoon. When I opened it, my son was stood on the pavement and on my doorstep was a little pile of boxes. They had a curry night last night and knowing how much I like curry but never make it because my husband won't touch anything spicy, my son had made extra so that I could have a treat dinner tonight. All home made: chicken curry, a dish with homemade paneer, cauliflower (gobi?? or something like that) and dahl. Oh but it was lovely. A lovely surprise and a lovely treat from my nice son : )

Happy New Year

 Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year in 2021!

We had a very peaceful Christmas and the trend has continued. It has been a peaceful week and we have have only been out to the shops once for some shopping. We have had lots of video/zoom chats and phone calls with friends and family. 

It is so cold at the moment and I think our energy bills will be going up. The cats are staying in a lot more instead of going gallivanting and sleeping close to the woodburner. We are getting through such a lot of wood right now. And the cold weather is getting to the hens now too because we only had two eggs today from the 13 of them. At least it is no longer snowing. My littlest grandson made his first snowman and loved it. We did not have a lot of snow and that snowman used up just about every flake that fell in my daughter's garden. We had lots of photos of the event which was lovely. 

Lockdown 2

 My children are worried about the aged parents and want us to shield more during this lockdown. I suppose we had better go at least partway to meeting their expectations to keep them happy.

I thought about all the panic buying in the last lockdown so I thought I had better go shopping and get some more things in stock - both to stop us having to go to the shops and to make sure that there were still some things left on the shelves. I was pleasantly surprised because Lidl was not particularly full of people nor were the shelves empty. Maybe people around here have learned from last time...  Anyway we have enough milk (fresh and UHT) and other fresh stuff to last 2-3 weeks and plenty in the cupboards and in the freezer. That should keep the family happy for a while even if they don't like that I have been in the shops today. And of course, we are allowed to go to the allotment and there are still some veg to be had there : )

Update

 They just kept my granddaughter in hospital for one night but did a large array of tests. The GP is supposed to take over now. They want regular blood tests and she was supposed to be having one tomorrow but that has been cancelled because the nurse who does the blood tests is now in isolation... So we are suspended in limbo for a bit while we wait to see what happens next. At least they have ruled out a lot of the nasties that could have been causing some of the symptoms so I am sleeping a bit better now : )

I was given a few quinces by a kind neighbour so I have made quince jelly which will be another thing to add to my Christmas hampers. However, both my HMSO and my WI jam recipe books said to add half an ounce of citric acid which I happened to have in my cupboard, wonder of wonders. But I was saving on time so when I weighed my sugar out in a bowl, I added the citric acid in on top..... and a clump of citric acid fell out and I had added twice as much as I needed. I could not tell the difference between the citric acid and the sugar so I just had to add it all. It is an incredible colour, very jewel-like but with a definite tang of lemon in the flavour. I think I had better label it as "quince and lemon jelly" and it will make a very pleasant alternative to marmalade for breakfast. Next time I get given quinces, I will make very sure that I weigh out the citric acid separately!

Worrying times!

 We have had a little scare this week as my granddaughter got taken to hospital. She had the coronavirus the week before I started with it but has not got over it yet. She probably has the long covid but cannot be officially diagnosed until the GPs are given the official papers to diagnose it in early November. However she got much worse in the last couple of weeks and after consultation with NHS111, she got an referral and an appointment at A&E. Turns out she has developed migraines on top of the long covid, but the GP didn't manage to diagnose that over the phone. She has various other symptoms that the hospital want an eye kept on. 

Worrying times!

Back into lockdown

Last week was a good week because I managed to see all my grandchildren although not all at the same time, obviously. One walked up to our house from hers to fetch something as there is only one road to cross. She is 8 now. Her parents crossed her over the road by her house and then I crossed her back. That family also dropped something off at our house one afternoon and we chatted for a few minutes with them stood on the pavement and us stood on the doorstep. We also saw little grandson briefly one day and oldest granddaughter too. With this new lockdown in our area, I am pleased to have some recent memories!

Mind you, we are back in lockdown again here but you can go to the pub or to a restaurant or to work or to school. It is a very halfhearted lockdown!

The Glorious Twelfth

Today is the Glorious Twelfth. And if you understand that, then you know where I grew up. As a child, it was simply a day with celebrations and parades and bands marching. I don't even know if they celebrate like that any more. There was nothing overtly political about it - just a good excuse for a holiday.

Today we celebrated by going to see our daughter and her husband and our little grandson. It was fun. My daughter and son-in-law also sorted my phone out because it was misbehaving. My phone threw a wobbly recently, deleted a couple of apps and refused to let others work although I could make and receive texts and calls with no problems. The phone also deleted my ring tone. and said that the SD card was corrupted.  This is all way above my technology skill set! Apparently there were some photos that were corrupted and this was the cause of all my problems. Anyway, they have sorted me and my phone out and I am happy again - until the next time...

It was lovely to see my little grandson and play in the garden with him. On our way home, I had a phone call from my son who asked that we call in at their house as he had something for me.  It turned out that they had been to an Asian shop and bought some real samosas with tamarind sauce and a carrot salad garnish. And, bless him, he had made sure to include enough for me. Yum! guess what I had for tea last night - as soon as I got in the door!  My husband won't eat them in case of meeting something spicy. I left him to do himself egg and beans and sat down and enjoyed mine : ) It was about seven hours since a light lunch so I was ravenous.

Yesterday I went to church for a morning service with a difference. Church but not as we knew it! We were sat in family groups all spread out across the sanctuary and there was no singing. And all of us wearing masks. It felt sooo weird. At least we can meet together for worship despite it being so different.

We have not harvested any different food from the allotment this week but just more of the same so I have not added to my list. My gooseberries are ready to pick but I just want a dry day for that.

Pop-up Duck on Big Water

Today, Postman Pat and his mum took us on a socially distanced walk to "big water" which is what the local reservoir is now called : )

It was a lovely walk. Our grandson showed us silver birch trees, alpacas, brambles and nettles and told us their names. He was two in April so I was very pleased with him! I must say it was so nice to have him chatting to us and not super shy like he was the other day. I found it really hurtful to have him so shy albeit understandable as he has only seen us on video calls for over three months.

One of the delights of the walk was sitting on the bank of the reservoir while our grandson ate a snack and watched the pop-up duck performing in front of us. It was a grebe but I now think Pop-up duck is a much nicer name : )

In my photo, the black dot right in the middle is the pop-up duck but my camera would not cooperate and take a closer photo. In reality, the grebe was a few feet from us and we could see every movement it made very clearly.

Postman Pat

This is Postman Pat who delivered (in his postbag) the card and present from his Mum to Grandad for Fathers' Day. My phone was not cooperating so it took several goes to get a photo taken. Hey ho.

The longest day

Today has been the longest day of the year. I love summer (so long as it is not too hot) but the one disadvantage is that the hens have not gone to bed until after I feel like I should be asleep. It always surprises me how quickly the days seem to shorten a bit after the end of June so that I can go to bed when I am feeling tired and without the aid of matchsticks to keep my eyes open until the hens have stopped partying.

The hens are still laying well. earlier this last week, I had ten and a half dozen eggs and was wondering what to do with them all. Since Wednesday, I have had so many friends requesting eggs (socially distanced doorstep visits) that I now have barely two dozen left. Although I have put six bags each containing four beaten eggs in the freezer for the winter when I will be complaining that I have lots of hens all eating their little heads off whilst laying very few eggs. At least I know that we will be having six farmhouse omelettes over the winter months : )

My leaf beet (perpetual spinach) is slowly coming to an end. One plant which had totally finished giving us any leaves was brought home and given to the hens. Within a quarter of an hour, there was only the thick main stem left. Everything else had been scoffed completely.

Today is not just the longest day but also Fathers' Day. We had a special delivery from Postman Pat alias our grandson and his mum. We had a socially distanced chat on the doorstep. Three passers by stopped to say hello to a rather shy Postman Pat. He did look so lovely in his outfit : )

After lunch we went for afternoon tea to our son's house down the road. We ate our tea in the garden with us on one side and the rest of them on the other side. Very nice too and with homemade chocolate buns : ) And when we got back to our house, we found that our other daughter had been and left a tray of not-hot-cross buns in the hall with dad written across them all in the paste that the crosses are made from. We had one each after tea and they were lovely : )

It has been a lovely day but I am ready for bed now and the hens are all still up and doing   : (

After Easter

So Easter has been and gone. I got my children to buy Easter eggs for their offspring and transferred the money to them online. I had little messages from them all to say thank you for the chocolate eggs. I daresay the chocolate eggs are no more than a distant memory now : )

It was my little grandson's second birthday this week. We had planned originally to have a family get-together today in honour of his birthday but that is not happening. So we had a family Skype call on the morning of his birthday instead. That was fun and even the young birthday boy himself seemed to enjoy it. After the Skype call, he helped his mum bake a birthday cake and then ice it when it was cool. His dad took a video of my grandson blowing out his two little candles and then, totally unprompted, singing happy birthday to himself. He had heard this song only a very few times but we were so delighted. It was so very cute. Definitely a proud gran here! Naturally I am totally unbiased - not!

New beginnings

So this week is the start of the rest of our lives post car trauma. Thank goodness! I have even slept the last two nights. Mind you, the can't-eat-my-dinner thing was good for my waistline.

So my oldest granddaughter, now 22, is trying to work out how she can get herself on the property ladder. She reckons that if she can get a toe on the ladder now, then that will be of benefit later. She has been saving hard and has some deposit ready. She can't afford a regular estate agent listing but wondered if she could buy something at auction. I am worried that she is looking at the guide price rather than thinking about how much the house might actually go for. Also, nobody in the family has any experience of buying at auction and it seems quite a complicated process to me, being completely uninitiated. I checked that she realises the whole long list of bills that she would have to pay as a homeowner - community charge, water rates, gas, electricity, insurance. She has everything on a spreadsheet and reckons she can cover everything as well as eat and clothe herself, run her car and have a bit over for herself. She is very determined!

I can well remember us buying our first house. We were very green! She is far more with it than we were. We will have to see what happens.

No visit

We had hoped to go down to Devon to visit my mother-in-law this month. However, my husband has had a really bad cold which settled on his chest. He has asthma so that is not a good combination! So we are not going to Devon. My mil has full blown dementia so she would not recognise us anyway. And after the visit, as soon as we had gone through the door, she would not remember that we had been. So the visit is really for us, not for her. The visit is expensive, both in petrol and the cost of accommodation. It is my mil so we don't mind the cost too much but I am glad that we held back on booking somewhere to stay as that would definitely have been money down the drain if we weren't going.

Now we just have to get my husband healthy again and find a spot in the diary that is not too busy.

Catch up and looking forward

It has been a little while since I posted. I could say I have been busy and it is true, but I seem to say that every time I do post. And I could not believe how many spam comments there were waiting for me to delete. I do enjoy it when I find that a real person has commented but these spam comments are a nuisance and I find them really irritating.

We have been to Cambridge for my husband's meeting three times since I last posted. Thankfully, we are not usually so well travelled. It takes a lot of effort to get my coffeeshop cooking ahead enough to go away and then I have to play catch up when I come back too. And our minister has been ill in hospital so my husband has been filling in for him as well. And then there is the exam marking which takes over life at this time of year....

My new little hens took a long time to learn to go up the ladder to the perch area to go to bed but thankfully they have now all learnt. The last two are obviously bears (well, hens) of little brain. They used to sit at the entrance to the run and wait to be shown how to go up the ladder to get to the perch area. I don't know why they just couldn't follow the others. It would have been so much easier for everybody.

One of my new little hens was obviously older than the others and has been laying for almost a month now. Just little tiny "fairy" eggs but very tasty just the same. The other girls are showing no signs of being ready to lay yet a while but I keep hoping. My older hens are not laying many eggs at the moment as we are approaching winter. The youngest of that lot are very middle aged now and the old ones are very old. My oldest is eight years old and she is lovely - a real character but I am aware that we are probably on borrowed time now. She moulted very heavily in September/October and has grown a really lovely coat back. Very pretty. I am always amazed at how warm a hen is. I really shouldn't wonder at it because I would be cosy too if I wore a feather duvet all day, every day : )

I have not got around to making any marmalade yet this year so I need to get to it soon to be ready to go into Christmas presents. I have a couple of people who would be disappointed if they did not get any homemade jams and marmalade from me. I often do a batch of sweet orange marmalade and a batch of Mamade marmalade and mix them at the "boil to a set "stage. The sweet orange marmalade does not have a good set but does have a lovely flavour. Mixing the two batches deals with the problem of setting but still leaves a good flavour.  The Mamade is quite expensive but the cost is offset by a net of yellow stickered oranges for the sweet orange part of it. But I need to get a move on before life speeds up even more with church things in December as it always does.

We are planning a big family Christmas this year and there will be 19 of us this time. We have booked my daughter's church for the afternoon after the Christmas Day service. We did this once before and it worked very well although dinner has to be just a little bit later than we would all like. Everybody is assigned a dish to bring which just needs to cook or reheat. My daughter will do the turkey and just rush it up the road in the car when it is at the "resting" stage. I am really looking forward to seeing everybody on Christmas Day and watching the grandchildren open their presents. The youngest one will be 20 months so old enough to join in a bit. Being at this church works well because there is a room with tables big enough to be pushed together and seat us all. There is also room enough for excited small people to run off a bit of that overexcited energy and space for we older ones to sit on comfortable chairs and watch. I've just got to get those presents organised now...

Holiday -ish

We have been away for a week. The main purpose of the time away was to go and see my mother-in-law in the nursing home but we had managed to free up enough time to have a week away. We were hoping to go and see Mum several times but have enough time to have a couple of days for us. It turned out that mil was much happier than the last time we were down there. Her dementia is much worse and that means that she is much happier in herself and not worrying about the things that were not making sense to her as she was last time.. It was a much harder visit for us but good to see that she was much happier in herself and not really in pain any more.

We went with Airbnb again and stayed in a log cabin near the National Trust place, Lydford Gorge. We were on a farm and the place was really lovely. the owners were nice too and we could have chatted for ages but farmers are busy people. They left us a breakfast hamper which was lovely of them. A loaf of nice bread, a block of local butter, a bottle of local milk, a pot of really nice yoghurt, a canister of tea (tea, not tea bags), a canister of ground coffee and a cafetiere and a tin of one of the posher instant coffees.

The only problem we had with the cabin was that the nice lady had provided feather pillows and my husband is allergic to feathers...  She uses feather pillows in her own house but managed to come up with enough polyester stuffed cushions etc to do us the night and we went to Tesco the next day and bought pillows. The duvet was filled with local Devon wool, which was the first time I had come across a woollen duvet. It was much heavier than the polyester one we use at home but was lovely.

We have stayed in a different Airbnb place each time we have been down to the southwest to see mil. They have been lovely places and we have been very well treated and loved the experiences. Next time we go down, I expect we will be Airbnbing again.