Welcome to my one hundredth blog post! I should have a party to celebrate or at least open a bottle of something fizzy, but in true 2020 style, I might do a small 'WOO'. My first post was in October 2018, and such a lot has happened in just over two years. I have lost my lovely brother, celebrated my 50th birthday, lost and now gained an awful lot of weight and become a runner (although I remain on the injury list at present).
And I became a grandmother, although until very recently, I had only seen Otto in photographs and on FaceTime. We finally met him last weekend, over bacon rolls and mince pies at Daventry Country Park, where we got to push him in his pram and see him at close quarters, and I am delighted to report that he is even more gorgeous in the flesh.
Early Onset Christmas. It's been a busy couple of weeks, with early onset Christmas and all that that entails. We picked up a Christmas tree from Aldi, and it was up and decorated in time for Mr C's birthday celebrations at the end of November. It did not have quite as much impact as usual, when the whole house is decorated in one exhausting day, but it still lifted my spirits, bringing welcome light and beauty into these dark days. Now however, I am beginning to wonder if it will last until the 25th, as the branches are starting to droop a little, and most mornings, I am having to scoop up a few decorations from the floor . The candy canes are once again disappearing by stealth, although this year I have learnt to add a few at a time, in the hope that they might last a couple of days at least. We are already on our second bottle of Baileys and third batch of mince pies. Needless to say, the already disastrous plans to lose weight are being shelved until the new year, when we will start all over again.
Wreath Making News. We are so pleased to be out of Lockdown, and on the day when restrictions were lifted, I met up (at a distance) with my big sister for the first time in many weeks. We took a couple of big bags and a pair each of secateurs and plundered the trees and bushes of Kingsthorpe in the name of Christmas. This year, I have really missed the annual wreath making event where the women of our family gather together, armed with glue guns and silver spray paint, as it signals the start of our family Christmas celebrations. My sister knows where the best berries, spruce trees and holly bushes can be found, so even if I am suffering this year, my front door will not. I trawled YouTube for videos to get some new ideas, and purchased a few moss rings and reels of floristry wire, and in the spirit of Lockdown once again, arranged a virtual wreath making event for my little branch of the family, which included my stepdaughter F, H's girlfriend and her mum, my friend Foxy and my two girls. As Northamptonshire is in Tier 2, we cannot currently mix households indoors, so the only other option was to do it outside in the garden, and unsurprisingly nobody was up for that. We had a lovely evening and of course my daughter T who is studying for a floristry degree, produced a stunning wreath, whereas L and I, in our usual style, threw everything at it and were grateful when most of it stayed on. Mine is on the front door, and L's on the wooden internal door. T's was given as a gift, despite Mr C's attempts to persuade her to give mine away instead (the cheek of the man!)
Birthdays. Mr C's birthday, which every year he insists he doesn't want to celebrate, was a mostly happy day, although tinged with the same sadness of every other lockdown birthday, with not being able to celebrate with loved ones. He was very spoilt, with deliveries of a mountain of cards and presents. It seems that chocolate and alcohol are exempt from his 'I don't want any presents' rule. I had planned to cook a fabulous three course meal, with homemade pate, beef wellington and a tarte, but he was insistent that he just wanted egg and chips. This is his favourite meal, although the chips have to be proper chips deep fried in a chip pan. Sadly, I can only do oven chips, which do not cut the mustard. So he plumped instead for spaghetti in a garlic cream sauce with parmesan and king prawns, and a baked camembert for starters. There was plenty of red wine and in the end, we didn't have room for pud. I had made a cornflake tart ( like he used to have for school dinner at Kingsley Infants), but it was just as nice to eat on the following day. Here is the recipe in case you are interested. https://www.littlestuff.co.uk/school-dinners-cornflake-tart-remember/ I used the leftover pastry from the tart case to make a twirly lattice, which sounds far more impressive than it was. In actual fact, it looked like a pastry seagull had shat out a few pieces of pastry poo onto a bowl of cornflakes. Can you picture it? Sadly there is no photograph, and fortunately they taste with their mouths and not with their eyes in this house. I had planned to serve the tart with pink custard but forgot until it was too late. Just leaving this here for you, in case you fancy some of that too; https://www.littlestuff.co.uk/school-dinners-recipes-pink-custard/ It's worth looking at some of the other recipes on the little stuff website too - there's jam and coconut squares, fudge tart and chocolate concrete. As a small child, I never got to taste any of these as every day I had banana and custard for my pudding because of a gluten intolerance. I have made up for it since....
Food and Drink News The sloes have now been removed from the freezer, bashed up and added along with a ton of sugar to a couple of bottles of gin and a half bottle of vodka. Sloe gin making is Mr C's territory, as is sloe gin drinking, and he doesn't do things by halves! The bottles are biding their time, hiding away in a dark cupboard along with the pickled onions and the chilli jam, making the most of the peace and quiet. Let me tell you, once opened, none of them will last long.
Writing Non News Christmas preparations have superseded writing, and my
NaNoWriMo attempts failed dismally, as I never recovered from losing so many words (around 12K) during an unexpected computer shutdown a few days in. I made it back up to around 10K, but nowhere near the 50K I was supposed to write. I will return to it after Christmas, refreshed and motivated. I have just received an email from the last agent, which was, no surprise, another rejection. So now I can confirm that 'Magpie' will be the first novel in my back catalogue, and I intend to begin the submission process once more, as soon as I have finished my second novel. I have received some positive feedback from the agents I approached, and the message seems to be 'not right for us at the moment but keep writing and don't give up.' It wasn't exactly what I was hoping to hear, but it could have been a lot worse, and I was warned over and over again that it would not be an easy process.
Chocolate Fever News Every year it is a battle to keep the chocolate out of the jaws of the dogs. I hide the Christmas presents in my writing den, and am sick of shouting 'shut the door' every time anyone enters the sitting room. The dogs are not allowed unsupervised into this room because they gravitate towards the big window sill and go mental every time anyone walks past the house - causing much tutting from disapproving neighbours but also making holes in my nets. This room also leads onto my den, and the dogs are very good at flying below the radar, eyes on the prize. I bought two boxes of liqueur chocolates - one for a present and the other, a present for me, to be consumed whilst watching Strictly. Heavenly! The boxes were left on my desk, out of reach but within the hour, Paddy, who has a nose like a bloodhound, had managed to eat half a boxful before being discovered. He spent the rest of the night being very closely monitored but thankfully has dodged yet another bullet. I have told him that his kidneys will be shot to pieces but he is not bothered. So the advent calendars are all up high and I am very strict in the policing of them.
Advent Calendar News. I was very excited to have been treated to a Percy Pig calendar this year, until I opened the first door (the numbers are getting smaller, so it was tricky to find) and found, behind the little silver foil covering, a chocolate in the shape of Percy Pig's face. I shared my displeasure with my kids, who pointed to the larger writing on the front of the calendar which says 'Percy shaped milk chocolates' with eyebrows raised, before returning to their screens. I wonder if I am the only person on the planet who has fallen down this hole. Let me tell you that I won't fall again. Last year my sister bought me a scented advent calendar, and the year before a cheese one. I thought that this year might make it my perfect hat trick of advent calendars, but M and S, you have let me down. On Christmas Day, I will get a bag of Percy Pig sweets, but on Christmas Day, I will be too busy eating (hopefully) dark chocolate gingers, brazils and Rafaello chocolates, to be bothered with jelly sweets. Now is the time I would really appreciate them. Dear Marks and Spencer....
I hope I'm not going on for too long and boring everyone, but I have been too busy to blog for ages, so there is even more than usual to write about. I have considered doing a Deathly Hallows and splitting it into a Part One and Part Two, but have decided against. If it gets too much, feel free to come back to it after a long sleep and read the second half. I have also added some sub titles which I hope might be helpful in enabling you to filter out the stuff which doesn't interest you.
ALEXA...... We have never been especially big on Black Friday, but I have been anticipating it with a little more interest than usual, with an idea which sparked from my daughter T's Echo Dot. She has been playing Christmas songs in her bedroom since June, as well as Baby Shark on repeat, much to the annoyance of her poor siblings. I have been a little jealous of her musical freedom, feeling like a poor relation, sitting in the kitchen listening to Radio 2. I thought it might be nice to buy a few Echo Dots so that we could choose what we listen to wherever we are in the house. They were reduced to just under £30 each for Black Friday, so I bought three, one for the kitchen, one for the sitting room and a third for our bedroom. We fired them up and began by belting out some of our favourite bangers. Alexa was our new best friend, until after an hour of action, she declared that she was having trouble connecting to the internet, after talking Mr C into signing up to additional services for a small fee. And that was that, on the odd occasion, she would oblige, but mostly the red ring would appear and she would deliver the bad news. Having trouble connecting.... The problem was exacerbated by everyone being at home because of Lockdown, all trying to get online. I hate our internet, it is completely rubbish. And then my daughter T, who has unlimited internet through her phone contract ( I type this sentence carefully, as I can hear her laughing and calling me a dinosaur in my head, as she does every time I attempt to talk about anything technological), offered to sign all of the echo dots up to her account, so our dreadful internet would not interrupt our fledgling relationship with Alexa. I was very grateful and it did seem to be working, until my Boney M shuffle was suddenly abbrupted halfway through Rasputin (those Russians!), swapping instead to Baby Shark. That is what I call an ulterior motive, my girl just loves to provoke and to be in control. However, it has endowed us with a determination to change internet providers, as under the current regime, none of us can access the wifi consistently. So thanks Echo Dot, you have achieved what home schooling, working from home and Lockdown never managed. And now the question is BT or Sky? Anything will be an improvement on what we have now, but every time Mr C calls the current provider to say he wants to cancel, he always comes off the phone with a big grin, announcing that there was this brilliant deal of The Natural Disasters Channel, 24 hours in Customs Channel and 24 hour Norman Wisdom films for only another £70 a month, and then we are tied in for another 2 years. So this time, I guess it's up to me. I hate doing this sort of stuff, it just takes so long and is so complex, but unless I return Alexa to her box, or am prepared to have Jim Reeves constantly interrupted by Daddy Shark, this is what I must do.
This week's top tunes. Now I am getting the house to myself for a few hours most days, as restrictions have been lifted, Alexa is once again my friend. Yesterday she brought me Meatloaf and Showaddywaddy. Today, songs from Cabaret and Jesus Christ Superstar, followed by Boney M, 5ive, Barbara Streisand and Atomic Kitten on shuffle.
My son H has warned me of the dangers of my conversations being constantly monitored, but I am just grateful at the prospect of someone finally listening to me.
Heavy heavy heavy. But I am still a little confused about a lot of things. I don't understand why she sometimes says she is busy in another room, and what it is she wants us to upgrade to. I would love to be able to ask her to switch off the lights and cook the dinner, but I don't think we are quite there yet. I bought some smart plug sockets at the same time but have no clue what to do with them. I have a feeling it will require me to download yet another app, which will mean sacrificing one of my exisiting ones to free up space. To get Alexa the app, I had to lose Instagram, and I'm not even sure whether I needed her in the first place as it seems that my daughter T now has total control of our devices. We are slowly getting to know Alexa and she now helps us by reminding us when it is time for Pop Master, and tells us how many Covid deaths and new cases there are each day. We have had some fun with writing shopping lists too, and Alexa is happy to read T's list out loud on request.
In T's basket. It usually starts with things like angel delight, pork scratchings and lemonade and then goes a bit rogue, to include things such as horsemeat, a boyfriend, and 'BBC' - this threw me, and if it throws you, I beg you not to google it, just in case. I did google it, wanting to know what all the sniggers were about although fortunately for me, T couldn't wait until I had trawled through the millions of suggested pages featuring the broadcasting company, and told me what it meant. Good job I didn't ask a policeman is all I can say. I have added a few more entries to her shopping list, such as a whispering voice, pleasant demeanour, a little patience, a kind heart, helping hands, tidiness and recycling, although I am not holding out much hope and expect they will all be unavailable.
T is beginning to enjoy playing with my great nephew, who I look after every Monday. She has limited experience of spending time with young children (he is two), and sometimes needs a little help with translation. This week she asked him what Santa is bringing him for Christmas and was totally bewildered when he told her 'pheasants', turning to me and mouthing 'What does he want with those?'
As grateful as I am to her for the loan of her data, and for guiding me through the minefields of social media, modern language and technology, the best thing that she does for me, is to make me smile.
