Was out today on my friend's barge. It was so lovely to be sitting on the deck enjoying some cheese and wine.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Messing about on the River
Was out today on my friend's barge. It was so lovely to be sitting on the deck enjoying some cheese and wine.
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Thursday, 16 July 2009
A van called Thomas...
There is a new love in my life. The boy is fully aware of what is going on, in fact he has fallen in love too.
His name is Thomas. He is a 1977 Bedford CF van. He is blue. He is vintage. He is wonderful!
He does have his faults. There is a hole in his exhaust, so he is noisy. His speedo may or may not be working right now (I don't want to get in trouble of have anyone looking for the van to take it off the road based on this blog!) so we know we aren't breaking the speed limit on the motorway but on smaller road it is a bit of guess work - does this feel like 30 mph?! His reverse lights don't work, which just means that one of us has to be outside of the van whenever we decide we need to manouver...
But there is so much that is right with him. A little sink, a gas stove, a double bed, lots of cupboards that are now full of mugs and glasses and plates and tea and coffee. Little cupboards in the back doors that are now full of treats. Ugly curtains and a roof that extends so you can stand up without bashing your head, even if you are as tall as the boy.
We've already been away on a jaunt - a week in France. It was great, Thomas loved being on the road and we loved showing him off. Waves from all the other campers, integrated straight into the camping community, we felt like the OAPs we really are at heart.
Sunday, 26 April 2009
Working the land...
Last year the boy and I grew tomatoes, courgettes, lettuce, a bucket full of lovely potatoes and an array of herbs on our balcony. At the time it was just his balcony, but now we are co-habiting in bliss I can claim ownership of this little stretch of 'land' outside our kitchen window.
This year we have claimed some land of our own. My Grandmother lives in North London and over the winter, before my Grandfather died, we spoke to them about taking over their greenhouse, fruit cage and a small patch of overgrown earth right at the end of their garden. They are happy to have some young people, enthusiastic and giddy at the sight of so much space to work with, to take it all in hand.
It was a tall task but once you are bitten by the growing bug there is little that you can do. The desire to have some land, something that you can dig and grown in is just too much. The idea that we couldn't grow anything this year was just too much to bear, or being confined to the balcony again when this wonderful piece of land was available. I'm also quite particular, I'm only interested in growing vegetables, growing something just to see it flower seems overwhelminly pointless, if you can't eat it then why would you bother?!
Throughout March and April we have been preparing our patch, ready to sit back and watch everything growing. the fruit cage has raspberries, strawberries (in their own raised bed), red- and blackcurrants and somewhere in there some blackberries. I say somewhere in there, the whole of the ground was covered in weeds and a bramble had come over the fence, possibly from the alloments that back onto the garden, possibly from next door, or possibly both! The boy spent whole days with the thickest gloves we could find on pruning everything that looked vicious and thorny. Talking to my Grandparents it appeared that they had had a blackberry bush but confusion with the gardener meant that it had been dug up. But then, in amongst the current bushes we found treasure, two small shots with no thorns, growing up from in amongst the brambles. We have high hopes that this is the blackberry my Grandparents planted, a thornless variety to save my Grandmother's arms from a similar fate to the boy's! It has been carefully weeded around and has begun to grow - watch this space!
Gardening is a cheap pursuit, a few good tools go a long way. But not that we would know as we are surrounded by the most amazing array of tools. My Grandmother's greenhouse has pots: terracota pots, pots that she made herself, plastic pots that she has saved, trugs, a little stand to kneel on when you are planting, trowels, forks, tools to plant out seedlings, canes to prop up tall plants, hanging baskets and more. The garden shed is an aladdin's cave of everything that a gardener needs. Every tool and gadget, garden wire, plant food, the netting for the fruit cage, spare clips for the greenhouse. Everything is perfectly placed, tidied away, even though it is years since anyone used these implements for gardening they are laid out like someone was in there just yesterday.
And so, yesterday we went to check on progress, plant a few last veggies and weed amongst the fruit. This year we are growing strawberries, raspberries, red and blackcurrants, maybe some blackberries, potatoes, broad beans, mange tout, onions, spring onions, carrots, courgettes, aubergines, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, chillis, rocket and parsley. On the balcony we have a dwarf apple tree and our herbs have come back all over again. We are going to add a few tomato plants and some lettuce that we can pluck, freshly grown, to add to our meals. It is hard graft but watching things grow is just about as exciting as the summer can get!
This year we have claimed some land of our own. My Grandmother lives in North London and over the winter, before my Grandfather died, we spoke to them about taking over their greenhouse, fruit cage and a small patch of overgrown earth right at the end of their garden. They are happy to have some young people, enthusiastic and giddy at the sight of so much space to work with, to take it all in hand.
It was a tall task but once you are bitten by the growing bug there is little that you can do. The desire to have some land, something that you can dig and grown in is just too much. The idea that we couldn't grow anything this year was just too much to bear, or being confined to the balcony again when this wonderful piece of land was available. I'm also quite particular, I'm only interested in growing vegetables, growing something just to see it flower seems overwhelminly pointless, if you can't eat it then why would you bother?!
Throughout March and April we have been preparing our patch, ready to sit back and watch everything growing. the fruit cage has raspberries, strawberries (in their own raised bed), red- and blackcurrants and somewhere in there some blackberries. I say somewhere in there, the whole of the ground was covered in weeds and a bramble had come over the fence, possibly from the alloments that back onto the garden, possibly from next door, or possibly both! The boy spent whole days with the thickest gloves we could find on pruning everything that looked vicious and thorny. Talking to my Grandparents it appeared that they had had a blackberry bush but confusion with the gardener meant that it had been dug up. But then, in amongst the current bushes we found treasure, two small shots with no thorns, growing up from in amongst the brambles. We have high hopes that this is the blackberry my Grandparents planted, a thornless variety to save my Grandmother's arms from a similar fate to the boy's! It has been carefully weeded around and has begun to grow - watch this space!
Gardening is a cheap pursuit, a few good tools go a long way. But not that we would know as we are surrounded by the most amazing array of tools. My Grandmother's greenhouse has pots: terracota pots, pots that she made herself, plastic pots that she has saved, trugs, a little stand to kneel on when you are planting, trowels, forks, tools to plant out seedlings, canes to prop up tall plants, hanging baskets and more. The garden shed is an aladdin's cave of everything that a gardener needs. Every tool and gadget, garden wire, plant food, the netting for the fruit cage, spare clips for the greenhouse. Everything is perfectly placed, tidied away, even though it is years since anyone used these implements for gardening they are laid out like someone was in there just yesterday.
And so, yesterday we went to check on progress, plant a few last veggies and weed amongst the fruit. This year we are growing strawberries, raspberries, red and blackcurrants, maybe some blackberries, potatoes, broad beans, mange tout, onions, spring onions, carrots, courgettes, aubergines, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, chillis, rocket and parsley. On the balcony we have a dwarf apple tree and our herbs have come back all over again. We are going to add a few tomato plants and some lettuce that we can pluck, freshly grown, to add to our meals. It is hard graft but watching things grow is just about as exciting as the summer can get!
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Weekend Pants...
I was discussing this with a friend of mine recently in relation to one of my favourite presents this year, days of the week pants!
They are great. Clearly I didn't buy them from anywhere that stocks underwear for adults, no Gap Kids is the place to be if you want to buy cute touches for your kids at ridiculous prices and my friend just wouldn't take no for an answer, so now I'm the proud owner of a pair of pants for each day of the week.
The dilemma arises that I don't feel comfortable wearing the pants for weekdays, but I'm happy wearing the ones for the weekends? Why? Well, this lovely off-the-cuff gift has thrown into starck relief something that has been coming on for for a while. It seems that my underwear, lead by my pants, is now split into distinct and not to be mixed two categories - weekday and weekend.
Time was my underwear was a simple choice - black. Black M&S cotton high leg pants, black bras, black M&S cotton socks. Job done. No odd socks as they can all be paired with each other, no worries with co-ordination, no white underwear that needs to be washed separately, no thinking about underwear in any real sense on any given day. Who needs to worry about underwear? I didn't really have anyone to show it to and on the odd occasion that this changed all black can cover for a lack of imagination and is no big deal if you are only going to show it off the once.
But then a few things happened. Not single any more I realised that it might be nice to have some sets of underwear and that none of my bras fitted properly anyway. When I went to get refitted I realised that in all the time I'd not been buying underwear things had moved on. There in M&S were loads of cute sets of bra and pants, not racy or lacy but just cute. In candy colours, pastels, cotton with little cute girl boxers, suddenly I was a kid in a candy-coloured bra store and I loved what I saw. I promptly bought a few matching sets and kept coming back to check on the new designs they had. In Topshop I found some girl boxers and invested in red Wonder Woman boxers and some with Animal from the Muppets on. As my collection grew I realised that I saw these new fun pants and sets much like wearing jeans, a casual underwear option for dress down on Friday or the weekend.
So it started to happen. During the week I was wearing my black default underwear uniform and at the weekend I was thinking about how my pants matched my bra, cute colours, pink straps and Wonder Woman pants that made me feel a little like a modern day superhero. The boy bought me a pack of Hello Kitty socks from H&M and so at the weekends black was out and stripey kittens were in.
But suddenly there is a spanner in the works: the days of the week pants. They are cute as, but the candy-coloured weekdays are sending my head into a tail spin. I can't wear these colours during the week under my work clothes. What next? Weekday colour bras? Stripey socks with my kitten heels? I'm totally stuck! And then at the weekend I can only wear the Friday, Saturday and Sunday pants, you can wear Monday pants at the weekend, it isn't Monday!
And so this lovely gift has suddenly shown up my weird underwear mindset, I have nowhere to hide! But then as my friend who I was talking to suggested, why not go for some weekend underwear during the week? Maybe a Sunday frame of mind could brighten up a dull Wednesday in the office... now that is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking I could do with mid-week!
They are great. Clearly I didn't buy them from anywhere that stocks underwear for adults, no Gap Kids is the place to be if you want to buy cute touches for your kids at ridiculous prices and my friend just wouldn't take no for an answer, so now I'm the proud owner of a pair of pants for each day of the week.
The dilemma arises that I don't feel comfortable wearing the pants for weekdays, but I'm happy wearing the ones for the weekends? Why? Well, this lovely off-the-cuff gift has thrown into starck relief something that has been coming on for for a while. It seems that my underwear, lead by my pants, is now split into distinct and not to be mixed two categories - weekday and weekend.
Time was my underwear was a simple choice - black. Black M&S cotton high leg pants, black bras, black M&S cotton socks. Job done. No odd socks as they can all be paired with each other, no worries with co-ordination, no white underwear that needs to be washed separately, no thinking about underwear in any real sense on any given day. Who needs to worry about underwear? I didn't really have anyone to show it to and on the odd occasion that this changed all black can cover for a lack of imagination and is no big deal if you are only going to show it off the once.
But then a few things happened. Not single any more I realised that it might be nice to have some sets of underwear and that none of my bras fitted properly anyway. When I went to get refitted I realised that in all the time I'd not been buying underwear things had moved on. There in M&S were loads of cute sets of bra and pants, not racy or lacy but just cute. In candy colours, pastels, cotton with little cute girl boxers, suddenly I was a kid in a candy-coloured bra store and I loved what I saw. I promptly bought a few matching sets and kept coming back to check on the new designs they had. In Topshop I found some girl boxers and invested in red Wonder Woman boxers and some with Animal from the Muppets on. As my collection grew I realised that I saw these new fun pants and sets much like wearing jeans, a casual underwear option for dress down on Friday or the weekend.
So it started to happen. During the week I was wearing my black default underwear uniform and at the weekend I was thinking about how my pants matched my bra, cute colours, pink straps and Wonder Woman pants that made me feel a little like a modern day superhero. The boy bought me a pack of Hello Kitty socks from H&M and so at the weekends black was out and stripey kittens were in.
But suddenly there is a spanner in the works: the days of the week pants. They are cute as, but the candy-coloured weekdays are sending my head into a tail spin. I can't wear these colours during the week under my work clothes. What next? Weekday colour bras? Stripey socks with my kitten heels? I'm totally stuck! And then at the weekend I can only wear the Friday, Saturday and Sunday pants, you can wear Monday pants at the weekend, it isn't Monday!
And so this lovely gift has suddenly shown up my weird underwear mindset, I have nowhere to hide! But then as my friend who I was talking to suggested, why not go for some weekend underwear during the week? Maybe a Sunday frame of mind could brighten up a dull Wednesday in the office... now that is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking I could do with mid-week!
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Reasons that I love him...
The title says it all, and that is all I really want to say. This is a series of photos that just remind me of how lucky I am.
Mini Daschund!
I have been trying so hard to get this little video onto YouTube, I love it so much. I spent hours looking for a little app so that I could rotate it (it was playing sideways as I filmed it with my camera tipped up).
On the snow day in London at the start of February I woke up really early. I was off work that week but my best mate has a habit of reading and replying to all her texts at about 7.45am if she hasn't had a chance to keep up with them the night before. Woken by a text that said she was snowed into Richmond it dawned on me that the snow I had been watching fall last night must have just continued to fall and settle.
It was magical. My road, untouched all night by cars, was white across the pavement and the road. No tyres tracks, my footsteps were the first to leave the flat and crunch their way out into this crisp morning. Armed with my camera and the Observer magazine from the day before my plan was to make it to Clapham Common, take some photos and find someone to throw snowballs at, and then hide away in a little cafe in a warm corner with Kathryn Flett (not quite as good as Barbara Ellen was, but so close you can forgive her.)
I won't continue to tell snow stories but there were snowmen, even one sitting on a park bench holding a starbucks, snowballs, snow fights, kids trying to kick down our snowman, photos and more besides in this winter wonderland.
And then there was the mini daschund, Maggie. Three months old and out with her owner she bounded around in the snow and I couldn't resist taking a movie of the little puppy as she got totally over excited. Everyone was looking at her, but she was far to overexcited to pay any attention.
Clearly my snow day encounter with Maggie has stayed with me. I have told my boyfriend so many times and squeaked 'mini daschund!' in a tiny voice as shorthand for all that is cute ever since. My reward? A very cute handbag for my birthday in a daschund print material - daschund bag!
Friday, 17 April 2009
Everything you need to know...
So let me catch you up. This blog, it's about my life, the things I think, the places I go, the food I cook, the pictures I take. I did think you might need a crash course in 'me' as it were in order to read the blog and get you up to speed.
I did start writing a potted guide to all things me, but then I realised that I was just babbling about random things (is that not the point of a blog in general though?!) and not really getting down to the business of actually just writing some entries and seeing if this is something that I'm going to enjoy which will bring together all the other crazy things I've been thinking about doing. Also I realised that actually you will need basically no background knowledge of me at all to read this blog, you just need to be the sort of person that likes life's random thoughts, good food, mundane but lovely photos, creativity and a bit of cake now and then.
But it did leave me thinking that it might be a good idea to explain why I want to write this blog and what I plan to do with it. And maybe the thinking behind the name...
I've written a diary every year since 1989. I've never written every day, some years there are a few scribbled months, others there are books filled with the minutae of my teenage years, but I have found writing relaxing and cathartic for as long as I can remember. I keep having wild ideas of blogs that I will write, charting my progress on some kind of lofty task - I thought about a dating blog when I was single (that doesn't really meet the lofty criteria but I think I thought I could be the next Bridget Jones!), this year my new year's resolution is not to buy any new clothes, shoes or accessories and I was convinced there was a blog in that somewhere too - and I often think of cool names for blogs, register them, write one post and then delete them.
This time however my approach is different. Armed now with an iPhone and a twitter account I've been posting little messages and photos, making photo stories with our cuddly toys and sending them to my boyfriend (yes, that is very soppy, you can vomit now if you wish), snapping dumb things I think my best mate would get a kick out of and the random stuff I see everyday. Before I wanted to be more creative so I was opening a twitter account, and a flickr account to put up random thoughts and showcase my photos. I was thinking of writing a blog about one thing in my life and then trying to write a novel about another part of it. But now I think, why not do it all but all together? Why not post photos, writing, movies, thoughts and see where that takes me.
And so, finally, to the name. Well, I have a bag from the Unicorn Grocery in Manchester, a Christmas present from a friend and it says on it 'Make do and Mend'. It is one of my favourites, which if you could see the out of control collection of reuseable bags that I have (tempered now only by the new year's resolution preventing me from buying any more) you would realise is actually high praise indeed. I thought about calling my blog that, but clearly it was taken. And then I thought, well why not use a bit of present continuous instead? I mean, this is my life, Make do and Mend, it's quite me, so why not make the name more about the fact that this is what I do everyday. And it's not just in a housework sense. I'm very happy with my life the way it is but I do believe you should be grateful for what you have. That is a version of 'Make do'. I'm not saying put up with something that is dreadful but there is everything to be said for counting your blessings.
And the Mending? Well, 2009 didn't exactly start in a fun way for me. Right now I'm not 100%, life isn't quite the version of normal that I'm used to. But I'm getting there, and I think 'Mending' is a good way to describe me at the moment, I'm certainly on my way, but I think elements of the blog will reflect the bit that I still have to go.
Thanks for reading. :)
I did start writing a potted guide to all things me, but then I realised that I was just babbling about random things (is that not the point of a blog in general though?!) and not really getting down to the business of actually just writing some entries and seeing if this is something that I'm going to enjoy which will bring together all the other crazy things I've been thinking about doing. Also I realised that actually you will need basically no background knowledge of me at all to read this blog, you just need to be the sort of person that likes life's random thoughts, good food, mundane but lovely photos, creativity and a bit of cake now and then.
But it did leave me thinking that it might be a good idea to explain why I want to write this blog and what I plan to do with it. And maybe the thinking behind the name...
I've written a diary every year since 1989. I've never written every day, some years there are a few scribbled months, others there are books filled with the minutae of my teenage years, but I have found writing relaxing and cathartic for as long as I can remember. I keep having wild ideas of blogs that I will write, charting my progress on some kind of lofty task - I thought about a dating blog when I was single (that doesn't really meet the lofty criteria but I think I thought I could be the next Bridget Jones!), this year my new year's resolution is not to buy any new clothes, shoes or accessories and I was convinced there was a blog in that somewhere too - and I often think of cool names for blogs, register them, write one post and then delete them.
This time however my approach is different. Armed now with an iPhone and a twitter account I've been posting little messages and photos, making photo stories with our cuddly toys and sending them to my boyfriend (yes, that is very soppy, you can vomit now if you wish), snapping dumb things I think my best mate would get a kick out of and the random stuff I see everyday. Before I wanted to be more creative so I was opening a twitter account, and a flickr account to put up random thoughts and showcase my photos. I was thinking of writing a blog about one thing in my life and then trying to write a novel about another part of it. But now I think, why not do it all but all together? Why not post photos, writing, movies, thoughts and see where that takes me.
And so, finally, to the name. Well, I have a bag from the Unicorn Grocery in Manchester, a Christmas present from a friend and it says on it 'Make do and Mend'. It is one of my favourites, which if you could see the out of control collection of reuseable bags that I have (tempered now only by the new year's resolution preventing me from buying any more) you would realise is actually high praise indeed. I thought about calling my blog that, but clearly it was taken. And then I thought, well why not use a bit of present continuous instead? I mean, this is my life, Make do and Mend, it's quite me, so why not make the name more about the fact that this is what I do everyday. And it's not just in a housework sense. I'm very happy with my life the way it is but I do believe you should be grateful for what you have. That is a version of 'Make do'. I'm not saying put up with something that is dreadful but there is everything to be said for counting your blessings.
And the Mending? Well, 2009 didn't exactly start in a fun way for me. Right now I'm not 100%, life isn't quite the version of normal that I'm used to. But I'm getting there, and I think 'Mending' is a good way to describe me at the moment, I'm certainly on my way, but I think elements of the blog will reflect the bit that I still have to go.
Thanks for reading. :)
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