Looking for a circumflex with a less fattening centre....

If I use more than two herbs in my cooking, then I regard myself to be on a culinary roll. So using three this afternoon, I tell you, I was on fire. Homemade beef soup. Not stew, as such. I was using the remnants of the Sunday roast. Everything hubbling and bubbling on the stove, I was light in spirit when I got the message.
"On way. It's pancake day!!"

Talk about throwing an iced bucket on my joie de vivre. That little message signalled all the boyish enthusiasm of my Dearest husband for pancakes.  Like today is the only day of the year he feels he can request them. And in his mind's eye, this will be the year that they will fly, paper-thin in the air, landing on his plate, lathered in lemon and sucre. The reality is that every year, I scoop together glutinous dough from a pan that resolutely refuses to submit to my vigorous tossing, squish it into a pancake shape and smother it in ice-cream.

But not tonight, pardonnez moi, my loyal French readers, I had to try something different. In The Sunday Times Nadiya Hussain (previous winner of Bake Off) gave a recipe for American pancakes. . Described as small, compact and plump. They had my very name on them. I even made the fruit sauce to go with. Apple and blueberries. Shape-wise, the pancakes bore a passing resemblance to the picture. If you shut your good eye. And held the magazine at arm's length.

After thirty six years of practising, I am sadly resigned that I am crap at crepes (with or without a circumflex).

These are Nadiya's....shadow is mine

Phoning a friend...

I did something novel today. I picked up the phone and spoke to an old friend. I hadn't spoken to her for about twenty years, I'm guessing. We keep in touch by sporadic email and by an exchange of  pucker communications on the Christmas card. You know, ones that gives you the juicy highlights of the year in handwriting.

What prompted this spontaneity at 9.05 this morning was that I heard about the Oscar debacle on the wireless. What a mess up. La La Land (my least loved film of the moment) believing that they had received yet another reward, were interrupted in their acceptance speech by being told an error had been made with the envelopes, and that Moonlight had won that category instead. Oh grandissmo cock-up. Nobody hurt. World still turning. But embarrassment factor reaching record highs on the blushometer.

So this morning, I thought of dear Janice who was an Assistant Floor Manager with me in BBC Scotland in the late seventies. She is still in the business and annually does the National Television Awards. She has made mention of the nerve-wracking business of envelopes on the night, and how she becomes their  fiercesome guardian. Terrifying younger colleagues whose mothers were not even born when she first started out in theatre. So I called her to tell her that, at last, the importance of her job had finally been publicly acknowledged.
Well, that is to say, a very old friend delighted in sharing the moment and hearing that wonderful voice again.
                                    

Trouble With the Wind...

Imagine an old lady. Tartan sheepskin-lined slippers with dangly pompoms, apron always on, curlers in hair, partly covered by headscarf. Meet the kindly old Doris of my youth.. Her only puff would be on a Players Number Six (or a Numby as I recall fondly they were called in my student days).

Today's Doris, with gale-force winds and worse, is a bit of a hell-raiser. Everywhere I've been, there are bins, if emptied, blown-over, or if not, the lids blown-open and their contents disgorged along the pavements. This is the South East where we are experiencing a less tumultuous visit from Storm Doris than the rest of the country. If I weren't such a sturdy girl, I could have been felled this morning. 

Talking of which, you could have bowled me over with a feather, when I read in today's papers that no longer are 5 portions of fruit 'n'veg good enough for healthy living. Now, if we wish to circumnavigate the potential deathtraps of life, we have to double the number we first thought of. Yes, 800 grams of fruit and vegetables is what is being recommended.  

I would regard myself as a generally healthy eater who has a small (but pronounced) predilection for quality alcohol, and the occasional (highly calorific) nibble, but even I quail at the sheer volume we should now be contemplating. 

Dear Lord, if, as a nation, we put this into practice we'll all be giving Storm Doris a run for her money.

Food to blow you away....

                       

Salad Days...

On the eve of my weekly weigh-in, I ruminate about food. By this time of night I am usually sated. Full of natural yoghurt and mixed berries. What? You're saying I'm full of something else?
Anyway, as I was saying, before you rudely interrupted, I am generally thinking about food. Food already scoffed during the week, and wondering with trepidation whether or not it will have any impact when I hit the scales tomorrow morning. If smelling paint fumes had any calorie-burning properties then I should float above the vibrating dial tomorrow.

I have to say that my eye was caught by an article yesterday about pizzas. Now, of all red-light foods, I genuinely find pizza highly resistible. So I was quite interested to see how pizza sales in this country are on the increase. The new angle is to develop toppings that contain healthy food groups. If I were to have one at all, I would go for a Margherita, nothing too fancy. I cannot begin to imagine how I would cope with finding beetroot, kale or broccoli as a topping. I would turn into some picky eater who carefully removed them, to eat them from the side.

A friend sent me this. No, it really wasn't me, eating the pizza. But it did make me smile.

Wong shade of white?

Dunnarf. A hark back to my youth. I was too well brought up to use it, but I have used it several times this week. 

Firstly, to describe my Annie Sloane project. Cor! That chalk paint dunnarf stink! Its pungent malodour hung around for days. I had to cut up raw onions and leave them on a plate in an attempt to restore some olfactory order.

And so today, once again with painters back in residence, the wong of Dulux hangs in the air. Wait a minute, did I say Dulux? Come closer. Let me whisper in your ear.. The white paint-work will be Dulux ; the walls will be Farrowed and Balled. Let's face it : bright white is white, surely? 

That's what I think anyway. But if I'm wrong, then I ain't arf gonna be in the khaki.

                                                            Versus....

Footnote 8: Bunion bulletins bore for Britain...

I'm suffering from Bunion ennui. Yes, I am truly bored with banging on about bunions. But I have  the issue of nomenclature. I named this blog The Great British Bunion and thereby shot myself in the foot, so to speak. I have a duty of care, therefore, to those poor buggers who limp to my blog in search of useful information. So for the rest of my dear precious readers, please bear with.

The second operation to straighten my second toe does not appear to have worked. It seems to be as angular as ever. Another medical visit beckons, but frankly, short of going though the whole schamozzle again, I am tempted to call it a day. Meanwhile the bunion on the other side is giving intermittent gyp.
I would like to have that hewn at some point in the future, because when all is said and done, shoes fit more comfortably now on the left foot.  That is a positive.

Just returned from a few days away in Hampshire with the family, great and small, and four-legged. The Feraro Rocher mountain was divided unequally between eight of us, and Petersfield had its own Farrow and Ball stockist. A little something for everyone. So we added two more sample pots to our new mountain of paint pot testers which reaches a critical tipping point tomorrow when our decorators return. I have got to the stage where I only have to look at a colour chart to feel queazy.
"Well, we've narrowed it down to 28," said my Dearest husband, breezily.
"So, I'll leave that with you then."
Great.

Says it all...

                                       

Re-Cycling Valentines...

I've been unearthing crud. Interesting crud. Naturally. How could you possibly imagine it would be dull crud? I have a spare room full of memorabilia. Spent Sunday silently weeping over letters of condolence written to my mother when my father died in February 1982. Why do it to yourself? Should these letters be kept as part of a social history to hand down, when emails and the internet will render ephemeral family memories? Or should they be disposed of? Or should it be someone else's decision?
Came across a handwritten card from my father to my mother which he gave her presumably on their wedding day. It gave me joy.

                                             

I then came across a Valentine from my Dearest husband. No, not one he'd written recently. Oh, my lovelies, surely you didn't think that? One he'd written, or not, as was the case, back in the seventies.
No handwritten message, as obviously he believed a Valentine should be anonymous. But what a whopper! HYB it had on the outside. All these years later, I pondered. What could that stand for? "Hi, You're Beautiful"? Obviously.

I opened it up. "How's your bod?" it asked.  How's my bod? What the heck? I felt as bewildered as I must have done, forty years ago.
In the absence of any other acknowledgement of the day (cool with that, totally) I shall put it up in a prominent position for when he gets home. It might slow down the scoffing of the Ferraro Rocher mountain he intends scaling, once the grandchildren arrive.
Or maybe not.

Mine's a big one. So is the card.

Fifty Shades of Greige

Yes, I know there's a sequel. You won't catch me anywhere near it. Ruined by Lala Land, I have used up my full quota of sad-masochism for the year, thank you. Never saw the first one, never read the book. In fact, I do confess to reading over someone's shoulder on the underground (filthy habit) and seeing something excruciating about nipple clamps that left me blushing all the way to Baker Street. But last night, my Dearest husband and I engaged in a tug-of-war of a very different kind.

Oh my giddy aunt! He has discovered the joys of interior design. I should never have taken him to Vanessa Arbuthnott's last weekend. It's opened a veritable can. Well now, we were discussing the Farrow and Ball colour chart. Have you ever experienced the special joy of an F&B chart? It all started with a shade of grey.

I really fancied grey walls up the stairs and landing. We have suffered from  a twenty-five-year buttermilk-anaglypta-impasse. Gouged inadvertently by a piece of furniture a week after it was done, it has remained a job too large to tackle, until finally, after I'd set grandchildren to start peeling the walls, its renewal became critical.

I had a yen for pale grey. Yes, I know it's ubiquitous. Quite the new Magnolia, in fact. But Dearest, I could tell, was not embracing the grey concept. And when he overheard the painters saying that they had done more grey walls than they could shake a brush at, last year, that did it for him. He didn't want what everyone else wanted. My husband the individualist.

The painters could only do the job in several sessions, as they were fitting us in. We were fine with that. However, for the past week we have been living with white-lined walls and white paintwork. Though unfinished, it looks so very much brighter and cleaner that I abandoned any thoughts I had of Elephant's Breath, Cornforth White and Ammonite. We are now down to All White (will it be all white on the night?) and New White as a contrast (subtle). In old money, brilliant white and cream.
But don't say that to Dearest, or he'll get you in a Clunch.  I tell you, this Smoked Trout felt more like a Dead Salmon by the end of it.
You'll be relieved we left the Dix Blue alone. I think that's where you came in...

In search of a whiter shade of pale

And we were singing, Hymns and Arias...

Rugby is a religion in Wales. Although living in Hertfordshire, my Welsh father ensured that we were educated in the game.   Wales has just lost to England, dividing our living room. An exciting match where Wales has truly recovered form. But not quite enough to extract a win against an equally determined England.
I've once had the privilege of watching a game in the Cardiff stadium. A memorable occasion. People will talk of the singing, but until you have been part of it, you have no idea of the sheer physicality of the sound.
Dearest daughter was keen that our six year old grandson watched the match. He has just started rugby in school. As he has a diminutive frame, she was slightly fearful of him being crushed by the bigger boys in his class. After the second lesson, he announced from the back seat of the car, that he had come third in rugby. With a rudimentary understanding of rugby, she knew that didn't sound quite right, but still, coming third was coming third, after all. She glowed all the way home.
"Tell Daddy how you did in rugby today," she said.
"I came third in getting dressed after Rugby," he announced proudly.

Today, he watched the game for a minute or two, then wandered off to build some Lego,
"That's not how we play it," he shrugged.
My daughter relaxed. For the time being.

JPR Williams Full-Back, Wales, and Hero of my youth

Strange things in my mailbox...

Apparently Russian women are looking for someone like me to be their wife.
What have I done to mislead these poor women? How can I tell them they are barking up the wrong tree trunk here. What would I do with a wife? A husband is about all I can manage at any one time. And that, currently, is using up all my resources. I can't disabuse them of the notion, without inviting a can of marching worms into my mailbox. So I sit on my hands and muse. Was it my post, when I announced I loved my Slimming World Leader? God alone knows. All I do know, is that she brought in some Quiche today, made of cottage cheese, packet pasta sauce, and four eggs, and the whole quiche was half a syn. Absolutely delish. I have now made my own and am sitting here, a quarter of a syn ahead, but totally sated. So I love her even more.
So sorry, Girls, I'm fully sorted. In every department.

One old lady to another:
"Do you fancy a quicky?"
"It's pronounced Quiche, darling"
Oh Lordy!

Charity shops taking a hit...

Well, now. Did you hear the one about the head of a Baby Clothing company who came out swinging when she discovered a group of mums on Facebook selling on her brand's clothing when their babies have outgrown them?  You could say, if people are daft enough to pay inflated prices in the first instance, then it makes sense to sell them on; we all know baby clothes are often outgrown before they become worn.
But have you noticed this obsession with selling? In the days of yore, we offered hand-me-downs to friends' children. I remember one friend with older girls would arrive with a big black rubbish sack, saying gaily, "Brought a bundle for Britain!" as if we were post-war refugees. After, she'd gone, we'd forage through and salvage one, maybe two dresses and consign the rest to a jumble sale where they should primarily have been delivered.
If ever, I passed anything on, I had my mother's example in my mind: clothes washed, folded and anything bobbly or showing signs of wear, jettisoned beforehand. And a bag. A suitable bag. Not just any old supermarket bag, but the most upmarket, I could muster. Presentation is all.
I remember standing at the school gate once when the mother of a child I barely knew asked me if I wanted some tights after her daughter. I said, to be polite,"How kind." The next day she turned up, and showed me  a mangled selection of well-shrunk, thickened tights in a Tesco bag. Smiling, I said, "How very kind.."
"So fifty pence then? Be fair.."  This was twenty five years ago when fifty pence could buy you quite a lot more. I smiled wanly and found the coin.
So upon reflection, maybe not such a new idea after all.

Never mind the width, feel the quality....

Long long ago, I realised that food made me fat. When another in my family, presses his nose against patisserie shop windows, hungry with desire and emerges minutes later with cake boxes crammed with tarts, nay, cornucopias of cream and fruit, I remain frigid with restraint.
So I regard my latest pash for upholstery and curtaining fabric as total displacement therapy. Dearest says that his little addiction is much cheaper than mine, which is undeniably true, but mine creates something more lasting, without a calorie crossing my lips and landing on my hips.
Not a cake shop on the horizon, as we headed North to Cirencester today to visit Vanessa Arbuthnot's Shop and Showroom. I have been pouring over her catalogue, allowing her range to be the sole source of inspiration for blinds and curtains. Samples only give a flavour; we had to travel two hours to view the real deal.
A wonderful journey through the beautiful Cotswolds, with the sun finally relieving relentless days of grey. It fulfilled everything I'd anticipated. A warm welcome, a cup of coffee, and the most exquisite range of modern textiles. Forty minutes later, we emerged clutching fabric samples and colour charts.
Forty minutes? I can hear you question. A two hour journey there, for such a brief visit? Well, there were two reasons for that:
1. Dearest had Rugby on his mind this afternoon. (Congratulations, Scotland. Brilliant result.) (Well done, England too.)
2. I was shepherded out because I had announced loudly that I wanted to move into Vanessa Arbuthnot's showroom.

I think I am far more gracious when cakes are bought. Well, maybe not?

Containing such stuff that dreams are made on...

Becoming an Annie Sloane Ranger...

My dearest husband rang me in the middle of the day. We don't usually do this unless it's an SOS for keys, phone or file left behind. I sat down to take the call.
"What the hell are you doing?" he asked sweetly.
"Sitting down,"I replied.
What he heard was the lengthy exhalation of breath as I lowered myself on to a dining room chair, with a mixture of relief and pure pleasure.
I had been standing for several hours, bent over a bathroom cabinet that I was intent on transforming from pine to painted. I wouldn't say I was aiming for a shabby chic look which is obviously so over. Sorry all you shabby-chic-lovers, but it's true. However, pine was so prominent in the eighties that for the most part it now looks sad and dated.
Well, over a year ago, I bought a can of Annie Sloane Chalk paint. Not one to rush into anything, me.
I was attracted by the fact that you do not need to prime, or rub down the surface to be painted, you can just whack it straight on.  Well, now, strictly entrenous, I am a whack-it-straight-on kinda girl. Preparation bores me inordinately. I just want to get to the colourful fun bit.
I have to say that having two professionals in the house who take preparation very seriously, inspired me to give it a once over with a wet-wipe. Job done.  I embarked on this bijou project thinking I'd have it knocked off in an hour. No such luck. I'd been at it for two, when Dearest provided a welcome interruption.
I have to say, it is a jolly clever paint which can be used on plastic, or metal as well as wood. It is water-based, so joy of joys, you can wash the brush under the tap.
When one of the Pros pointed out a tiny bit I'd missed, I found I was grateful. No sudden rise in blood pressure, or pounding in the eardrums.
Isn't it strange how one is able to construe this as gentle guidance? How different it would have been if Dearest had said the same thing.
"You missed a bit," might have caused red mists to rise.

He's not home yet. If, on the other hand, he's very enthusiastic, and supper very much an uppermost concern, then I'll know it's only cupboard love.

Shabby Chick gets handy with a flick of paint

I'll just put the kettle on...

Time to bite the bullet.
We have been on a break from all things plumborial and decor-related since the downstairs bathroom reached completion. But now we have cranked back into gear with the re-decoration of the stairs and landing. Such a job. Men, ladders, jigsaws, and pasting tables make this place look and sound a veritable hive of activity.
Then it will be the turn of the upstairs bathroom which needs  a new loo. So I have once again been panning for porcelain. Unlike the sleek modern lines of the one downstairs, this will be a Heritage Victorian style which is more in keeping with the roll top bath and my ancient shanks. Close-coupled is how it's described. Sweet.
One thing I won't have to invest in, is a hand-dryer. They are truly loathsome things, are they not? Yesterday I went into Paul's in Marylebone for a spot of lunch ( very light; lots of lentils) and visited the bathroom. It was very small and contained a sink and hand dryer. I set it off every time I was not centrally placed.  In the end, I was  nervous wreck. But it just goes to show that bathroom planning, whatever size, is critical. That hand dryer could be considered a flaw or a indeed a feature  à la japonaise .

Depends on how broadminded you are. Or maybe you're like me? Broad-beamed. And very conservative in my taste in toilets.