Yours truly, out of humour

MY DRATTED SPUDS are almost growing faster than I can keep up with. Every day I’m having to top up with more compost. At this rate I might end up a bumper crop of potatoes but I shall be a wreck!

Anyhow, I’ve another problem, health-wise, today – my periodically recurring gippy tum. Don’t know what’s set it off this time – I promise I haven’t touched any shellfish. It’s certainly griping up badly; so far I have to use the loo about six times – I even have to dash to the gents’ toilet mid-shop at the supermarket.

Oh, the joys of growing older!

Talking of which, have you noticed how, when you’re treated as a wrinkly, you end up feeling like a wrinkly?

I’ve been sent a form to fill in for my heating allowance for next winter; I’m applying for my bus pass and I can get my prescriptions filled free of charge now.

Honestly, all these perks have made me feel a lot older than I did just a few weeks ago when I was only fifty-nine and eleven months old.

On the other hand, grumpy I’m certainly getting. Glancing at next week’s Radio Times I’m struck by the omnipresence of coverage of some footballing event – almost every channel seems to be carrying some match or other, driving out even the meagre offerings they usually show.

At times I feel I’m the only sane person in a world driven into a stew of collective madness!

Anyhow, my tum seems to have quietened down for the minute – I had a bowl of chicken soup about an hour ago, and that seems to have settled it – so I might just risk a cup tea…

Might put me into a slightly better humour.

Just pottering

AL, OUR JOBBING gardener, seems impressed with my spuds, and even suggests most of them are big enough to need earthing up.

So I spend a back-aching hour shifting soil and compost into my patio bags yesterday until only the tips of the tubers are showing – and guess what, already by today, most of them have grown an extra inch or so. Just like that, overnight.

My tomatoes are progressing fairly favourably, too – bushing out, with the stems thickening up. Too early for fruit of course, but definitely looking promising.

Only the onions seem a little lackadaisical – doing nothing but just sitting there. Still, I did wonder if I was maybe overdoing it with them.

Anyhow, I’m modestly pleased with my gardening efforts so far, and with all the rain today I don’t even need to get out my watering can. God’s on the job.

For dinner this evening I do us a pie from the freezer – a rather excellent beef in red wine, made with great chunks of meat and a delicious rich gravy. All too often, shop-bought pies can be disappointing – thin, watery efforts, pastry cases filled with a syringe. Not so this one – I would not have been ashamed to have made it myself from scratch.

Sunday evening, after the chores of the day, is basically just telly watching time, recorded episodes of Daily Cooks Challenge (ITV 3) and NCIS (Channel 5). I put My Good Lady to bed about 9 o’clock, then watch a little of the Bafta ceremony (all rather tedious) before going off for my evening shower.

A quiet weekend, then, just pottering around home.

Much to-doing

WE’VE BEEN HOME for a week now, and a long week it has been.

First, I’m anxious to plant out my potatoes – they are chitting-up nicely during our absence - and I need to visit to a local garden centre for some extra compost and more vegetable plants, to assemble our raised garden and prepare it for our tomatoes and onions… My fingers are growing quite green.

Nor is that all: we have an invitation to a financial presentation and a free lunch at a posh hotel in Grange-over-Sands in Cumbria, which we feel obligated to go to.

Then we have some major shopping to do to top up on all those run-down essentials we used up prior to going off on our travels.

All this, of course, is on top of trying to get the house shipshape and back to normal running order.

Meanwhile, too, most of our friends here want to see us and hear all about our holiday, which entails going along to the Pub most days.

Little wonder, then, that My Good Lady and I still haven’t fully recovered from our trip – MGL in particular has been having some really early nights, and even my sleeping pattern has been more broken than usual.

At least, now, we should have the chance to catch our breath a bit; we’re making no further plans for the moment.

The holiday, and all the to-do it entails, has left us exhausted!

Problems

EVERY NIGHT this week, just as I crank up the computer, I get a message to say I’m suffering from a Server failure.

What on earth goes on?

Losing my internet connection is a nuisance to say the least of it.

I’ve not even caught up with my email backlog after our holidays.

I can’t do my internet banking, I can’t post my blogs or read other people’s, I can’t listen to the radio on the BBC’s iPlayer.

I’m writing this offline, on Word, and if the connection gets restored – as it sometimes rather arbitrarily does - I shall try to sneak it on.

Meanwhile, I have to apologise to readers and assure them that normal service, I hope, gets restored soon.

Back again, back again

YUP, WE'RE back!

We survived the French union bureaucracy of Nice airport and even got our flight home more or less on time. (People have been known to miss their flights on account of it - but that's another story and I don't want to be negative.)

It was a good holiday.

Expensive, but good.

But I don't want to talk about our hols - Gordon Bennett, what's happened to the country since we left?

Tories in power, Lib-Dems in second place, Labour nowhere - we leave leave the country for a couple of weeks and it all goes to pot!

Sorry, you want to know about our holiday...

Okay, well, really, it was rain, rain, rain.

We had a lot of rain. Wind and rain.

You probably had it better here.

We still enjoyed it, though - in fact it was one of the best villas we have ever rented. We love Provence - the mountainous area just behind the Riviera - and it certainly didn't disappoint.

Highlights: Nice itself of course - the Cotes d'Azur - the blue coast - is well named; it really is beautiful and glamorous and all that.

Personally, I prefer the area behind it: the ancient Romans called it Provincia Romana, from which we get our word "province", and which, in French pronunciation, we get the wonderful region of Provence.

I swear, when I retire, I would love to live here. It's the Englishman's dream of France - villas perched on impossible mountain slopes, a sea so blue it dazzles the eyes, olive oil flavoured - everything...

Oh yes, this is an area to which we shall be returning.

But it's great to be home.

On the move again

IT’S ALMOST TIME for us to be off on our travels again – this time to the fabled French Riviera.

Almost all my life I’ve dreamed of going there – even before I saw Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief.

The very names ring with glamour and sophistication: Cannes, Nice, Monte Carlo… Soon we’ll be rubbing shoulders with the ghosts of the likes of Grace Kelly, Scott Fitzgerald, Simone Weil amongst many, many others.

We’ve got our little list of things to see and do – actually, it runs to nearly a page and a half of My Good Lady’s tiny, spidery handwriting.

If we see a quarter of them we’ll be doing well.

Anyhow, since I’m not proposing to take a computer with us, it means we shall be out of touch with this blogsite for at least a couple of weeks.

Fear not, though, we shall be boring you with the tales of our adventures when we get back.

Till then, from us both, au revoir and à bientôt.

Or in the words of the immortal Bertie Wooster, “Pip pip!”

Interesting week

IT’S BEEN AN interesting week, this, even aside from my passing my 60th milestone.

I’ve pleased our gardener, Al, by announcing that I’m going to have a bash at growing some more vegetables, and the containers for them have arrived this week.

One raised bed and liner for crops like green beans, carrots, peas and maybe some mixed salad and courgettes – if indeed the seeds I’ve ordered from the BBC arrive in time.

I’ve also got three potato patio planters for the spuds I’m hoping to grow; we go along to a local garden centre to buy the actual seed potatoes.

(Unfortunately, the instruction about planting these seem to be somewhat contradictory: you must chit them first in the dark or in the light, you must cut the larger ones in half or not cut them at all, you must then plant them out in two weeks or three weeks – or even five weeks…)

Talking of food, I have to say I’m rather chuffed about my experimental meal this week – another Raymond Blanc recipe, this one for fricassee of wild mushrooms. (I actually can’t find any wild ones in the shops, so I choose a selection of cultivated exotic ones instead.) The recipe is a bit involved, but the results, I have to say, are well worth it – My Good Lady and I thoroughly enjoy them.

But I suppose the highlight of my week has been my birthday. People have been ever so kind and considerate in their expressions of best wishes and to all of them I’d like to offer my sincerest thanks.

It really is great to have friends.