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!

A Christmas dream

TO BE honest, I don’t really consider myself an adherent of the Christian faith. There are as many things about Christianity I loath as I admire.

I suppose I agree with Nietzsche’s comment that Christianity lends itself to corruption as much as to joy and Godliness.

But if I’m not of the faith, I am, of necessity, of the tradition; I was brought up a Christian, indeed a Catholic, and especially at this time of year I’m surrounded by the symbols of that two thousand year old tradition.

Okay, I admit, it’s a stretch from the gifts of the Magi to the crass commercialism that we all endure today and of which we are all, willy-nilly, victims.

I do admire some of the music which the tradition has inspired, both classical and popular.

And in the latter category, I would like to mention one of my favourite secular carols which I was pleased to hear again on Sandie Dunleavy’s radio show in BBC Radio York.

Christmas Dream was written by Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice for the otherwise rather forgettable 1974 film, The Odessa File.

Why I like this particular song is because of the lyrics which talk of “the crying, the shouting, the dying” – unusual to say the least of it.

The sentiment that “All nights should be silent, they should all slow down” is one that I heartily subscribe to.

Above all, the chorus:

The whole world needs a Christmas dream

We need it to warm us,

To calm us, to love us…

is surely at the very centre of the Christian tradition.

And in that tradition, in that spirit may I offer to one and to all a warm, calm and loving Christmas.

My Christmas dream indeed.