Season's Greetings

Snatchems

HIGH TIME I posted again, I think – readers, if I still have any, will think I’ve been kidnapped by Martians or something…

I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with My Good Lady’s health scares – including having to ring for ambulances a couple of times, and her four-day stay in the local hospital; and that is on top of the various GP sessions I’ve had to take her to. It’s all been a little worrying.

She’s doing a little better now, I’m relieved to say, although she’s still got more scans to attend – we’ve still no real idea of what the problem is.

Aside from this what’s new? Well I suppose one of the main issues is that we’re now no longer going the Geriatrics’ Corner of the Pub. So many of our friends have either passed away, or just drifted away, that making the eight-mile round trip seems pointless. It appears that the happy, golden, Camelot years there are well and truly over.

Instead we’ve been visiting a local landmark pub: Snatchems, more properly known as the Golden Ball Inn. Sitting right on the river, as it does, the road to it floods twice a day, cutting the old place off from the outside world.

The original pub dates back to about 1710, but the new owner has spent a fortune restoring the place, adding an upstairs wing which looks out across the river towards Lancaster and the open Pennine fells beyond.

MGL and I come to spend an agreeable hour here, watching the birds on the water – herons, geese, gulls and the like – and occasionally meeting up with some other refugees from the Geriatrics’ Corner.

The pub’s nickname comes from the fact that the River Lune is navigable at this point, and ships setting off from Lancaster Quay which were undermanned would put in here and shanghai any drunks who happened to be about!

I’m told the practice is now discouraged!

Rediscovering Ambler

A CHANCE find at our local public library has brought me to the company of a favourite old author.

I’m talking about the spy/thriller writer Eric Ambler. Sadly, most of his work seems to have been out of print for quite a long time now – I haven’t seen any of the books for years, at least twenty…

So, if you haven’t heard of him it’s hardly a surprise. But re-reading Ambler now, in a new Penguin Modern Classics edition, I’m enchanted all over again by the quality of his prose.

It’s the kind of writing I would have liked to have done myself. Indeed, I once had a bash at writing thrillers, but discovered my imagination simply didn’t run in that direction.

Which is a pity, since I do enjoy reading this genre of fiction, especially when it’s of such a high order.

Okay, yes, it’s a little dated, written and set, as it is, in the pre-World War Two years of the thirties. But the wonderful sweep of the storytelling, the realism of the setting, the truthfulness of  psychology of his characters, the pristine quality of the literary style all make for sheer reading joy.

No need to take my word for it, though. When the likes of Graham Greene, John Le Carré and Alfred Hitchcock all praise him as one of the best thriller writers of all time, then you just know you’re onto someone really special.

I commend him to your attention.

Still rolling along

THOUGHT it about time I posted another of my once-in-a-blue-moon blogs.

I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with life, health, weather and miscellaneous other issues – to the point, indeed, of finding myself somewhat at a loss for words, not to mention time and enthusiasm.

So, then, what have I been up to lately?

Well, not a lot really. When asked how I am, I tell people I’m like the wagon still rolling along, if only on three wheels (and two of those are wonky!).

We had a rather nasty blow a few weeks ago – torrential rains and high winds – and as a result some of my raised beds look as if they’ve been trampled on by an elephant. The metal frame of one the beds has sheered right off, while another has got so badly bent I’ve had to use sticky tape to hold it together.

I almost gave up on having any crops at all this year – my tomato plants looked utterly wrecked, and the green beans and peas seemed crushed. Only my spuds seemed to thrive on all this rain.

And yet, amazingly, little green globes have appeared on my Black Russians and we’ve already enjoyed some of my sugar snap peas and french beans. Truly, nature can be wonderful.

On the health front, I’ve been fitted up with aids to help sharpen up my loss of hearing – but I find they become irksome after a few hours and on the whole not a great deal of help. If anything, too, I suspect they are making my tinnitus worse.

Meanwhile, I’ve taken my punishment for a speeding offence by attending a four hour long awareness day in lieu of having my licence docked; to be honest I found the afternoon tedious and tiring, with my concentration badly flagging long before the end.

So that’s about it. Oh yes, I’ve had various other health-related anxieties especially with regard to My Good Lady, but she’s already written about those herself.

Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a while, don’t worry – I’ll still be rolling along.

Return to grouchyness now that the party's over

SO FINALLY, all the Royal brouhaha is over, and we can get back to our normal, everyday concerns and troubles.

Ours appear to be growing faster than my seed potatoes!

Thing is, I damaged the rental car whilst on holiday – not too badly, just a bit of paintwork nicked.

A quick spray over and the job is done; I was in half a mind to do it myself before I took the vehicle back.

Now I’m sent a bill – and not just for costly repair job (taking up to four days)  but for a further two weeks’ rental which I’ve already paid in full.

I’ve dispatched emails to both the rental company and the car hire site I used to locate the vehicle.

Neither seems to be able – or willing – to help, and they keep passing the buck from one to the other.

And since I’m unable to pin anybody down I find myself dangling, impotently, at the mercy of the wretched internet.

Another problem, a bank transfer has gone agley on us – a rather hefty sum of money has left one account but hasn’t arrived at the other end and over a week has now elapsed. Again, a flurry of emails has produced no satisfactory solution, just another buck-passing situation.

Then there are all our health concerns, with medical appointments unable to be made or visits arranged.

And in the midst of all this we have a four day Royal jamboree when everything seems to grind to a halt and nobody is available to do anything!

If I sound grouchy, it’s because I'm being frustrated at every turn.

A drench of French rain!

SO, FINALLY, here I am again, recovered from our travels (please see The Oxcliffe Vixen's recent postings) and my rather rushed gardening efforts – I’m now suitably aching in my back, my upper thighs and even my glutes!

As My Good Lady has already explained, we had a lot of rain this holiday! As a result we didn’t get about, perhaps, as much as we should have liked.

However, we have brought back a few happy memories, perhaps the best being our visit to the mediaeval town of Sarlat:

 not least because it was on one of our few really warm, sunny days!

We also visited a couple of chateaux, a truffle museum (where I contemplated buying some of these much revered fungi until I discovered the price! no wonder they call them Perigord’s black gold!), and a museum of medicine (which made me thank god I wasn’t born in earlier centuries!).

The weather also put a damper on our dining out experiences. MGL treated me to a rather interesting restaurant meal for my birthday, including a remarkably delicious starter of foie gras on an apple tart, followed by some of the best veal either of us has ever tasted!

But I have to admit, I haven’t come back from this holiday as refreshed as I would normally expect. Maybe because of all that rain, maybe because of our horrendous journey home.

Would I visit this part of France again? Probably not. Certainly, there are other regions I’d sooner visit, or revisit, than this area of the Dordogne.

Ah well, roll on our next vacation!

March in one shot

HERE’S March in one fell swoop!

• Begun revising my French for upcoming trip – on an Aussie online course! If my accent doesn’t confuse our Gallic acquaintances I’ll eat my chapeau!
• We buy a new set of saucepans, lightweight aluminium ones, ’cause our old cast iron ones are a bit too heavy for me to lift with confidence (the stroke, you know). Almost the first thing I do is knock over the frying pan with two eggs in it, and they land on the carpet, sunny side down. The new pan is now blessed with a great dint along one side.
• Couple of really lively sessions at the Pub. Rob, the manager/chef, assures me that when I die he’ll name our regular table after me. I tell him that that honour ought to go to PD – who, after all, spends far more money here than I do. “Oh no,” says Rob, “I’ll have him stuffed and mounted!”
• Al, our gardener, makes his first appearance of the season and gives our still sodden lawn a first tentative trim. Meanwhile I take delivery of a new raised bed and some extra large potato planting bags – I’m determined to rediscover my green fingers again this year.
• Discover I don’t really like sea bass – to me it has an excessively tough, scaly skin and virtually no flavour – which is perhaps why it’s so fashionable, something fish haters can eat without the worry of tasting anything.
• Still on food: I do us a couple of interesting slow-cook dishes, a beef stew in a peanut butter sauce (I know, sounds ghastly, but it turns out quite good) and a chicken cooked in Riesling wine.
• I finally manage to lock down a hire car for our French holiday – it’s amazing how difficult it is to find an automatic car in Europe, almost as bad as trying to find a manual one in the States and Canada.
• My Good Lady is beginning to feel the benefits of the longer daylight hours and the milder, sunnier weather – always a relief to me when we put our thick coats and winter woollies away. We’ve survived another winter – hip, hip, hooray!

Heralds of spring

I’M ONLINE, listening to the David Jacobs Collection on BBC’s iPlayer feature.

And wafting down the hall from the kitchen is my latest slow-cook experiment: a Bonfire Night Sausage Hotpot. It’s still got four hours to go, too!

Anyhow, I’m somewhat shocked to discover that it’s already February; the daylight hours are growing perceptibly longer, and despite the heavy frosts we’re experiencing I’m amazed to see crocuses shooting up in the front garden and many of the trees at the back already in bud.

Heartening little heralds of spring!

Oh, roll on the end of this rather dreary winter!

Revisiting the past

I DO us a tasty stew thing as my experimental cook this week – a mix of chicken thighs, sweet corn and broad beans, all slow-cooked together in a tomato sauce.

And it’s such a relief to be back in good appetite again, for both My Good Lady and myself… our stomach complaints have finally abated.

Meanwhile MGL and I have been making little trips out in the car to see how well I can cope with the driving.

Since my stroke last year, it’s been something of a chore for me to go any distance – some of the deadness in my leg returns.

Anyhow, today we do the weekly shop and then, since it’s such a bright afternoon, we go off into the countryside around us, and pay a visit to the village of Silverdale, a place we know very well indeed; the hotel, there, was at one time one of our favourite dining spots.

Oh, it’s all changed of course – under new management, revamped and, to me, running to seed a bit, but still pleasantly familiar nonetheless: plus ça change and all that.

It’s a far cry from its glory days, though, when the hotel’s telephone number was “Silverdale 3” and when excursion steamers used to moor there for afternoon tea.

Back in those days the grounds extended down to Morecambe Bay, with fine, manicured lawns, beautifully laid-out gardens, and where guests could avail themselves of the tennis courts and the bowling greens.

Then the deep-water channel of the River Kent shifted and the hotel – indeed the whole village – was left high and dry, marooned as it were on an expanse of sand.

Most of the land was sold off for redevelopment and the village now has the sleepy air of a dormer backwater.

It’s still got a certain charm though and I can well remember our first excitement, when, as newlyweds, we lived in a damp, draughty cottage at nearby Crag Foot, and we used to explore this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Happy memories!

The longest week of the year

IT HAS struck me before now of course – this interregnal period between Christmas and the New Year, and just how long it often seems.

But this time it’s been, I think, the longest few days of the year.

Partly, of course, it’s due to the fact that the holidays have fallen on the weekend, extending the brokenness of the period by an extra four days.

Mainly, though, it’s because My Good Lady and I have been suffering from severe digestive problems caused by – I’m not quite sure what.

Food poisoning is my first thought, but I’m told that there’s some sort of virus floating around.

Oh, Christmas lunch with our friends goes off well enough, but we come home already feeling suspiciously tired; I certainly need an hour’s nap, and MGL is away to her bed by about 8 o’clock.

The next day the problems start with us. Neither of us feels much up to either cooking or eating, so we heat up one of the ready meals we keep in the freezer for emergencies.

The next day I am in really serious discomfort, with my stomach aching, a general feverishness wracking my whole body, and my appetite completely deserting me, as has my sense of taste: MGL has gone to the trouble of cooking up a Moroccan lamb tagine thing and I can barely manage a mouthful of it.

I eat practically nothing for the next couple of days – a bowl of soup, a small, plain omelette and that’s about all.

By this time MGL is also showing similar symptoms to mine – truly we’re a sad pair indeed.

So passes the week until Friday, when, for the first time we feel well enough to join some of our friends at the Pub for an hour or so.

By Saturday, though, New Year’s Eve, MGL is in frightful state again; she spends most of the day curled up in her armchair, a blanket pulled up to her ears, clasping her griping stomach and refusing almost all food and drink.

I’m doing a little better, though; I persuade her to try a bowl of cream of chicken soup, and later in the evening, I microwave a rather bland fish pie for her.

She does rally a bit later, we even manage a bottle of wine, and in this way we see in 2012.

But I have to say this has been one of the longest – and worst – weeks of the whole year!

You can bet that I’m praying for a happy New Year for us all!