Hello, yeah, it's been a while. Not much, how 'bout you?

It's been a while, but living in Bugville really doesn't engender a great deal of exciting activity to write about. Having said that, summer has been healthy and wise if not wealthy, due in no small part to the sheer volume of veggies produced from various bits of the garden by my very clever Boy. It's all looking a wee bit shabby now, though, and there's nothing much left growing except a couple of peppers, some beetroot, a few radishes and the winter carrots, leeks, greens and celeriac, so it's back to the Farm Shop until the Spring. The freezer's full of fresh tomato sauce, though, and the pureed fennel tops for turning into fennel pesto ( a splendid Summer development dish) and the store is laden with spiced fig and onion and green and red tomato chutneys and a dozen jars of mirabelle conserve, so we have some tasty things to look forward to.

In the Summer break when, if truth be told, I was just far too lazy to fire up the blog, we had quite a few visitors including the nieces to pieces, young Mr Gibbs, various Belgians and The Paperboy, I sold a couple of pictures at an exhibition at Upper Snobton, we discovered the best Farmers' Market EVER, we rode miles on our bikes, I started writing a foodie book and sketched out the outline for a novel, we laid a new floor in the bathroom, we threw an immensely impressive Golden Wedding party for the Runts and went to several slightly lower key events, I got into Farcebook and therefore time-wasting of IMMENSE proportions, we had lots of verandah time, free festival time and went to a fantastic concert by Meneer V, Kris and Jeff and their two sidekicks Jimmi Moliere and Eli in the Vismarkt. The Boy awarded himself the whole of August off - very French and very unusual.

Now that the evenings are drawing in, there's more incentive to sit hunched over the keyboard and, blessings upon blessings, we have actually got some social engagements booked in so there will be entries. I promise nothing....................

Nothing in life is certain, except food and ranting.....

So the rillettes are made and look and smell so damned good that I want to take a spoon to them right now, if not sooner. I have a real penchant for this sort of thing. There's nothing nicer than a bit of slow cooked stickily soft meat, all herby and garlicky, bound with soft meat juice jelly and served with a lump of rustic bread.

The Boy's guinea fowl wrangling paid off, too. He turned out a very fine dinner, stuffing the bird with a mixture of mascarpone and brandy, browning it in an INORDINATE amount of butter and pot braising it, before flambeeing it with more brandy. The juices left in the pan were reminiscent of that sort of unappetising but deeply delicious curdled stuff that you get left with after cooking pork in milk. Lovely saute new potatoes with bacon and a side of wilted spinach and it was a very fine dinner indeed for a Wednesday.

Yesterday, dodging the rain, we did a quick zip down to Bugville on the bikes, ostensibly to 'have a break, a coffee and a trip to the library'. Break was nice,but we forgot that practically everything closes in Bugville at about 5pm so coffee was a rush job in Tchibo and the library visit was as stressful as last time. I now, though, have an official form to fill in so that I can complain about that. Shame I can't get one for Bugville....................

Tchibo are closing down in to weeks time, apparantly. We asked why and were told that the German parent company is closing all the UK stores because they're not making money due to the Euro/pound disparity. Ah, good. Another empty shopfront in Bugville - well, until either a pound shop opens up, or another mobile phone shop - because we REALLY, REALLY need another one of those.................we crawled home, against the wind, dead dispirited. Not because of Tchibo, that fazes us not one jot, never really shopped there, but just because this town is dying on it's feet. Woolies went, Mothercare went, Tchibo's going, even the Pound Market went. We have no decent cafe, no book shop (well, we do, but if you want any sort of intelligent book, you have to go to West Snobton), no decent clothing stores. However, if you're into the latest mobile phone or other electronic gadgetry, World of Warcraft, shiny sports clothing (not to be worn for sports), charity shops or pound shops, or cafes serving greasy shite food and unspeakably weak coffee to non-caring tourists, the Bugville's the place for you. The Town Centre is supposed to be under some sort of regeneration programme. Yeah, right......

In a non-thinking mood, we have spent that last two evenings (to our eternal shame) watching crap movies - Mad Max on Wednesday and Terminator 3 - the Rise of the Machines yesterday. I'd never seen either and there's probably a good reason for that, as they're both Crap with a capital C. Mad Max put me in mind of a seventies porn movie, for some reason. I can only think it's because it had that hand-held, shaky camera vibe, a slightly off-key soundtrack and terrible, cheesy, badly lip-synched dialogue.

This evening, once the Boy gets back from t'Smoke, we will mostly be slumped on the sofa with glasses of wine (this being a non-school night, I shall be indulging) and a large and fragrant plate of homemade paella, for in the fridge are crayfish tails, long red pepper, the remains of the guinea fowl and some fennel which, with the addition of good stock, a bit of saffron, garlic, smoked pimenton and some chorizo should turn out pretty authentic, in a cod-Spanish stylee. Last night's effort involved white beans, served warm as a salad with onion top, parsley, chopped fresh tomato and a bit of Greek yoghurt and grilled (outside, lest it stink up the whole bungalow), lamb rump chops, pre-marinaded in a herb, garlic and grated onion paste, which was my tasty attempt at a sort of Greek/French hybrid stylee. As we have zero spare cash at the moment and can't afford to be sitting somewhere Spanish, Greek or French to eat the real thing, the Verandah Cafe in Gardenia will have to do.

It's June, Jim. But not as we know it..........

I seem to remember, not long ago, being told by the Met Office that we were due for a scorching summer. The weather today, yesterday AND the day before belie that and today sees me indoors with the doors firmly closed, wearing jeans, sox, jumper and an old lady shawl. The sky is leaden, the wind is whipping the treetops into a perfect frenzy and everything has a completely downcast and dejected air about it.

Being hermetically sealed indoors, there's no escape for the cooking fumes - the house smells slightly of a rendering plant, due in no small part to the slow cooker-ful of meats confiting down in duck fat. There's pork hock off the bone, guineafowl and chicken, thyme and bay from the garden and tons of garlic, all gently stewing away to unctuousness and destined for a pate of gargantuan proportions and yumminess. Once cooked, I've got an idea for finely mincing the porky bits with a bit more seasoning (perhaps a blade or two of mace) and layering that up in a Kilner jar with the roughly chopped bird meat. A bit of stock to moisten and a topping of duckfat to seal it all in and I'd call that pretty damned good, in a rillettes sort of a way. I feel the call of toasted bread and cornichons with......

The Runts are coming for lunch on Sunday, along with Lord and Lady Grangefield of Aldwick. The Pa was 70 on Sunday, so lunch is by way of celebration for that. L and L G were official 'Lookers after of Boy' whilst I was away last year, so it's partly a gratitude lunch as well. The Boy is planning a garden produce showcase extravaganza, so whatever else we have, there'll have to be lettuce, peas, courgettes, cucumber and strawberries with it.

I have a sort of plan involving a trip to Shoreham Farmers Market this weekend - if we can get some good fish, the menu will go something like: stewed peas and jamon in Little Gem cups, herb and ricotta fritters, hot chorizo (as hapjes with fizz)), the rillettes as above, three sorts of warm fishy dishes - I'm hoping for mackerel, whiting and trout so that I can do semi-soused mackerel with black olive sauce, trout with orange, white wine and fennel and whiting with stewed onions. Dish of warm new spuds. What's not to like? After, a cheese course (hopefully a nice local sheep cheese, shaved thin, served with salading, raisins, nuts and a bit of balsamic glaze) and finally, blueberry, strawberry and lemon cheesecakes. Good enough for Jazz.

The Boy is cooking tonight. He will be wrestling with guinea fowl.

I'm completely folked.............

Ah, the Coco Lounge. Such style, such class, such ferkin expensive drinks. The Festival Club Night was held therein in a room of such slumminess that any self-respecting tramp would have turned their nose up at it. Lovely formica tables, drinks in plastic beakers, dirty beige walls, loudly grubby carpet, a background of pumping disco sounds through the walls. Three drinks for £10.60 - I nearly carked. Nice bar staff, though and the musicians were very good, if a little teeny, weeny bit.......peculiar.

Well, to be fair, one of them was. The rest were just folky.

Poor N came down from t'Smoke and got dragged along. I think she enjoyed it, but she might just have been being polite. She arrived by train on Saturday evening with Betty Brompton the Incredible Folding Bike and a lemony smelling box of bathroom goodies and we hurtled back here from Bugville station in time to wolf down a sticky chicken salad and a blueberry cheesecake before introducing her to the delights of Tinytown. As if Tinytown Folk and Roots Festival weren't enough of a torture to inflict on one's friend, the Boy introduced her to his geetar repertoire when we got back here and there was singing in the sitting room until quite silly o'clock.

This was slightly daft, as The Boy had to get up at stupid o'clock to oversee catering numpties in't Smoke, leaving us to while away most of the day in the sun on the verandah, chatting. Like girls do. We did go for a bit of a stroll on the beach as well - down to the Greensward and back. N collected stones and shells and wrote our names in chalk on the groyne post. Like kids do. Luckily, the sun was out for that bit, unlike later, as we left for Bugville and the train, when it was pissing down and we got soaked. Like idiots do.

Later, the Boy and I, as gluttons for a bit of punishment, drove to Tinytown for yet another concert at the Windmill. This was a real class act, costing £4 each.
The Windmill is quite sweet. It's a little theatre come cinema, staffed mostly by volunteers, unlicenced (so you have to go to the Arvester next door for anything verging on the alcoholic), but with a dear little kiosk where you can indulge your fancy for Losely icecream and Minstrels ad lib.

The concert itself was excellent, though. Once we'd got over the shock of seeing what looked like a small bundle of tie-died, velvety hippy dangly-ness stroll onto the stage carrying a guitar and begin to sing, we were mesmerised. This Sue Dubowi was the support act and she was awesome. Intriguing, other-worldly voice and stunning guitar playing. She just looked like an illustration from a 'There once was a kindly old witch....' book. She sings in a really quite languid and lowly sexy way, like you imagine a siren would, all beguiling and come-hithery which is bizarrely at odds with the way she looks. The Boy is ever so slightly in lurve. I might be too, were I that way inclined.

The main band were Legacy - one of the fiddle players and Mal from Friday's Triskel concert, plus a different guitarist and another flute-playing girly, from Ireland, to be sure, to be sure, but posh. They were pumping and diddly and channelling the Chieftains, but none the worse for that. We had a great time.

What was sad about the whole weekend was that it was pretty poorly attended. The theatre was only about a quarter full, there were only 30 or so at the Coco Lounge and about the same at the Squash Club. I don't know about the pub gigs inbetween. The Tinytown Council had put up some money and were supporting the whole Festival but personally we'd not have found out about it had we not been last month to the Bugville Folk Club and seen a flyer on the table. We get the local paper, but there was nothing in there, nor did we see publicity anywhere else. It's the sort of local initiative that really should be encouraged.

Having said that, should you be a Gay Hussar, a salty old seadog, a rosy cheeked ploughboy or a maiden of any sort (abandoned, disappointed or betrayed) with a penchant for blossom picking and listening to the birds that do sing or be there any sort of three day folk festival nearby in the next few months (or even in the month of May), I'm not your woman..................

All around my hat..........

I wore intricately woven verdant plant material, but it wasn't for a twelvemonth and a day, just figuratively speaking on a jaunt to Tinytown last night for the opening gig of the Tinytown Folk and Roots Festival. Cost 2 of our English pounds for a comfy seat in a slightly strange venue (the Tinytown Squash and Badminton Club - wall to wall beige with uncertain curtains and a less than competent barmaid fighting with a barrel of Upper Snobton real ale). Good bands, though. A couple of unlikely lads playing bluegrass-y Americana stuff and jigs and reels, followed by Triskel, a 4 piece Celtic roots band of some repute. Serious fiddles, classy guitars and a crinkle haired Oirish maid on flute. She sang a good tune, too.

We enjoyed it a lot. What we didn't enjoy, and can never really get our heads round, were the Tinytown mutant contingent in attendance who seem to think it's OK to talk bollocks and laugh very loudly when the 'turns' are on. Why in Cliff's name would you go to a niche folky event and not listen to the chuffing music? Tinytown is known round here for it's mutant inbreeding and blimey, you could see it in every beetle brow. Obviously, folk music's a bit too challenging for some - all that wordy narrative and difficult foot stomping - you can see how the concentration might wander a bit. As I'd had a less than serene day (what with the specs debacle, the pre-apocalypse planning re-write and De Quervain's Hand of Doom playing up quite considerably)) and being somewhat hormonally challenged at the moment, I was getting a bit...how can I put this.......MIFFY. Luckily, the band had their speakers turned up a bit and that eventually drowned out the mutant braying.

We don our hats again (and I may even stick my finger in my ear and join in the singing) this evening for the Festival Folk Club event, being held back in Tinytown at the ...ahem....Coco Lounge. We passed the....Coco Lounge on the way to and from the Squash Club last night. On the 'to' journey, it looked OK, in a modern, open bar sort of a way. On the 'from' ....hmm....Grant Mitchell looky-likey 'door personnel', lingering puppy fat in unfeasibly tight and short skirts, shaven headed swaggery lads smoking outside and a drum and base riff thudding through from inside. That'll sit well with the be-sandalled, cheesecloth wearing, crinkly haired folky crowd..........and their verdantly bedecked hats.

Through with glasses, darkly.....

I've finally finished the coups, insurgencies and disasters documents - timely indeed as I was getting ready to stab myself through the heart with a biro through the sheer boredom of it all.

In between hurricane planning, wildfires and kidnapping, I had a bit of a moment with Glasses Direct who have had my prescription and an order for new specs for the last three weeks. As they'd been spectacularly lax in communicating, I rang them last week and was assured that things were in hand. Today, disappointed, as the glasses certainly weren't, I rang them again, only to be told that erm, they'd lost my paperwork and prescription somewhere on the transfer between warehouse and glass making place. Oh, says I, is it a long way between your sites of operation, then? - thinking perhaps Doncaster to Cornwall or someplace. Oh no, says charming girlie on help desk - it's downstairs. Sigh.

I despair. Really, I do. I order stuff so rarely off the pixieweb (being a bit of an untrusting and everso slightly paranoid clog-wearing Luddite)and I only did this time because The Boy had used this shower before and had been impressed with the service. Now I'm perched on the horns of an oversized dilemma - do I take the 15% discount they offered me off the cost of the (already stupidly cheap) glasses bearing in mind I've got to get a copy prescription from the opticians, send it to them again and then wait for the specs to be made or do I just huff loudly, tell them where they can stick their Lauren frames with scratchproof lenses and go elsewhere where I'll doubtless pay triple for privilege, but get them within about three days?

Lettuce be lovers..............

We've eaten produce from the garden every day this week - sometimes twice, if nothing else to keep the rampaging lettuce crops under control. The Boy has gone a bit crazed, bringing out new trays of seedlings (mostly lettuce) from the greenhouse nearly every day to fill in the every decreasing gaps in the already overburdened borders, raised beds and pots. With the warmer weather, everything is sprouting really fast - I can't get down the path beside the garage without fighting my way through a jungle of potato plants (now in flower, so not long til the first crop), the greenhouse is full of tomato, radish, pepper, aubergine, okra and strawberry plants, there's chard, curly kale and broccoli, cavolo nero, celery, leeks, garlic, shallots, spring onions, beetroot,carrots, blueberries, strawberries, cherries and plums outside and courgettes, squash cucumbers sprouting in the compost bins and herbs fairly burgeoning on the potager.

It's just unfortunate that all that's actually ready at the moment is lettuce - 10 different sorts, it's true, but lettuce all the same................to be fair, we DID eat the first of the peas on Sunday, stewed up in that particularly delicious Spanish tapa-like way with little bits of jamon and garlic, but since then it's been lettuce. All the way.

I've been doing the proofs for a staff evacuation plan for one of the clients today. They're a small company operating in a support role on an on-shore oilrig somewhere in one of the less stable parts of the world. They've suddenly decided, what with terr and the war thereon, porcine and avian flu and being in a pretty jungly sort of a place where insurgency and coups are, shall we say, the norm, that they need a staff evacuation and Crisis Management plan. The Boy has gathered together pretty much everything there is to know about any sort of emergency, both natural and not and has spent a week writing a coverall policy. There are pages and pages, covering flood, hurricane, tempest, plague, wildfires, earthquakes, civil unrest and the rest. What it boils down to in essence is: Managers: Keep a helicopter on standby on the roof and get in it at the earliest possible opportunity. Staff: Kiss your sorry arses goodbye.

I corrected the grammar and syntax of 64 pages this afternoon, sitting in the sun on my verandah. That was the introduction. I lost the will to live at about 4.30 and had to eat a couple of slices of banana cake. I have five more similarly sized sections to correct and he's STILL writing it. Still, what we'll get paid will go some way towards the huge second home tax bill we have to pay for the other house this year, which seems to have increased by a phenominal amount since last May. I may have to insert the babelfish and ring up the belastingsdienst to see what the hell's going on.

In the meantime, there's always lettuce...................

De Quervain and the Hand Of Doom....

This is the first day that I've really been able to use my hand for anything meaningful for about five weeks, given that I've developed what my GP says is De Quervain's tenosynovitis. Well, bloody De Quervain can keep his chuffing tenosynovitis to himself, the shite.

I haven't been able to really:

Do up my own bra.
Wipe my bum properly.
Wash my hair with any degree of success, let alone hold the hairdryer to dry it.
Cut anything resembling a slice of bread.
Hold and peel spuds.
Chop anything
Pull my rubber gloves on or off without swearing with pain. Very loudly.
Turn the pages of a book.
Use the bell on my bike
Use a pen and write with any sort of legibility
Press the buttons on the phone
Do up buttons
Pull up my own pants very easily
Pull up a garment side zip
Lift anything heavier than a bee's wing
Get money out of my purse
Do anything requiring small motor movements of any of the fingers or my thumb on my left hand which, considering I'm VERY VERY left-handed, has made life VERY VERY difficult indeed and if I were to meet this bastard De Quervain at any time now or in the future, I'll be forming my good hand into a tight fist and inviting him to run onto it VERY VERY HARD.

Bookworming........

I've spent today being mostly pissed off and cross and it's all the fault of Bugville Library - well, actually it's the fault of the fuckwits at the County Council and their insistence on this idea of inclusivity for libraries and making them a 'positive place for all'. I don't have a problem with the sentiment. After all, if no-one goes to libraries, they'll be closed and sold off for redevelopment in an instant and poor old Carnegie will be spinning like a top in his grave but, for God's sake, just let me be able to find what I'm looking for.

There's a swanky new 'access centre'. That's fine - it's an on-line catalogue. Unfortunately, in a monumental bit a non-joined-up-ed-ness, it doesn't actually tell you where to find the book. Oh no. Instead of the old method of shelving fiction alphabetically according to author (which would be too simple), you now have several sections in which to search, depending on the SUBJECT of the book. This is all very well if you actually know the mindset of the person who decides which subject category the book fits into. If it's a paperback book you're after, they've got special round shelving, nominally alphabetical, but hopelessly badly filed AND put into subsets. I was looking for something by Karen Maitland. They've got 6 copies according to the catalogue. Couldn't find a one of them. Searched high and low. Crime. Nope. History. Nope. Saga. Nope. Fantasy. Nope. General fiction. Nope. Modern Novels. Nope. Went to the information point to speak to the librarian. She was very helpful and insisted on talking me through how to use the on-line catalogue (again)in a slightly patronising way, even though I'd told her that I'd already looked there and I knew she had six copies stashed way in the building somewhere. She huffed a bit and stomped off to search as well. The catalogue definitely stated 6 copies available, none out on loan. She couldn't find them either and admitted that she didn't actually have a clue about where they might be shelved, given the subject matter, which is a bit historical in a thrillery, fantasy sort of a way.

And this is how you get more people to join and use the library?

I came home with the new (non-fiction) David Starkey about Henry VIII instead, which isn't QUITE the same, but will certainly be slightly more educational and which I found completely by mistake in the Crime Thrillers section. It won't keep my mind off the seasickness tomorrow like the Karen Maitland would have, but it'll make the lorry drivers on the ferry think I'm dead clever. We are off to the Flatlands for the weekend with a vast shopping list for chums, our bikes and a pack of bacon.

Oh. And N has a new bike. She's called Betty and she folds up. But she's not Princess Pashley......and she never will be.

The Weekend of Princesses and Revolutionaries

So, the weekend started with a bit of a whimper (from N, not me), with the news that Princess Pashley was taken from outside the Goodge Street offices, despite being chained up with three of the most hardcore chains. Thank God Hercules isn't still around to hear that bit of news - he'd be heartbroken. People are such gits, especially in London. Someone must have been checking out Princess for days, as you just don't have a pair of bolt cutters about your person in the normal run of your day-to-day existence. N said she heard a bit of a ring and though 'Ooh, that sounds just like Pashley's bell'. Course it was - bastard thief giving triumphal ting as he sped away, no doubt.

I heard the news en route to dinner on Friday at the Waynebah with Mr and Mrs Fleming. We had a lovely evening. The Waynebah sits on the corner of the square in one of those picturesque villages that Southern England does so well. The food's good - bistro/restauranty - tasty mussels in cream and wine sauce, roasted snapper with leeks and mustard, home-made lemon cheesecake with raspberry ripple icecream for me, goat cheese and red onion tart, slow roast pork belly and the (interesting) cheeseboard with chutney for the Boy.

Saturday found us in Oxfordshire at a very posh party in a tent, courtesy of one of The Boy's clients, celebrating their tenth anniversary. Theme - Cuban, which made for interesting costumery............

Unlimited pink and Widow fizz (i lost count after 8 glasses), grown up hapjes (warm chorizo, hummus, cheese straws and smoked almonds on the flower-decked and very colourful tables), personable girlies walking round with trays of canapes (marinaded bocconcini and cherry tomatoes on skewers, hot spiced lamb samosas, prawn cocktails in dinky glasses) for what seemed like hours, a cocktail bar serving the best mojitos it has ever been my pleasure to neck down, a vast barbecue of chicken, garlicky king prawns with chunks of fresh fresh coconut, home-made burgers in ciabatta rolls, salmon, beautiful fresh pea, mint, feta and melon salad, cherry tomatoes and a serious coleslaw accompanied by wines and beers of your choice (unlimited), followed by four types of serve-yourself puddings (chocolate mousse, lemon posset, passionfruit meringues and strawberry cream pots), self-serve cheeses (a whole Brebis, wheels of forme d'Ambert and an unpasteurised Brie with membrillo. All this, coffees and spirits ad lib, a bumper car ride, bouncy castles, an icecream van, a Cuban Band, a Blues Band and a One-Man Band in the grounds of a real, bona fide castle with a moat. Lovely.

Slightly the worse for wear on Sunday, though. Sort of a bone-dry head, like someone had sucked all the moisture and goodness out of me and replaced it with sand. Luckily the Boy had undertaken to cook so after spending the day carrying out his own particular form of garden maintainance involving lots and lots of secateur-wielding, he made a pie of immense proportions, without a recipe and to his own design. I must admit his initial idea had me swallowing hard and turning a bit Thomas, but it worked and in a big way. He made a layered filling of couscous with tons of marjoram, thyme and oregano, stewed red and green peppers with onions, chunks of feta cheese, spinach from the garden and slices of Bavarian air-dried ham. Total deliciousness -which is more than can be said for the leeks a la greque accompaniment - sauce, delicious, made from last year's frozen tomato sauce with onions, garlic, fennel and coriander seeds. Leeks - ah, yes. Like little spring onions, they looked, leading us to believe that they'd be tender in the way that only a baby vegetable can, plucked from the garden and straight into the pot. Ooh. Twiggy peasticks, actually, or bits of green bamboo. Tender, not. Not even after 40 minutes. Arse.

Haircut 100........

By getting caught in the rain (promised for last evening, but arrived this morning) on the way back from the farm shop, I've now got slightly crispy, wiggly hair of immense and eighties-ish proportions - like a spiral perm and certainly odd, considering that I'm more a 'yard and a half of pumpwater' sort of a girl in the tonsorial department. Oh, to still have one of those rake-like combs from my teenage years. I could do a real Bananarama. What with The Boy channelling a slightly gay 'Tintin' quiff, following a bit of Pinnywearer barbering last evening, we are going to look a right pair tonight. Still, it's his fault really for seeing the haircut he's always wanted on a bloke on the Tube, coming home and vaguely describing it to me and then expecting me to cut it. As I'm more Sweeney Todd than Toni and Guy, despite many years of practice, I don't think I can really be blamed if people laugh at him in the street today. Not that they will, as he looks very cool (IMHO), but he's had the 'Russell Crowe Gladiator' for so long that it's going to take a bit of adaptation, not least because he's got to get used to using a bit of 'product' and sweeping it all back and across instead of forward and down. The double crown could prove a problem. Stupid spiral head.................

We're being taken out to supper tonight by the Flemings. They don't entertain at home like mere mortals - they go out. We don't know many people who do that except Mr Bursar and Little B (and perhaps Rich Little Bro, but he's never actually taken US out and paid). As it's our wedding anniversary, it's somewhat of an treat. We don't usually bother - never really have. Last year we weren't even together - he was here and I was in Belgium aan het studeren.

I had a great call from Pa last night. He was laughing so much that he could barely speak. The Runts and I have this 'parsimony/good husbandry' rivalry thing going on, seeing who can do most with the least - you know, I've got a mushroom and a rasher of bacon and five people have turned up for supper. Pa rang to tell me that their supper was going to take the biscuit as far as frugality and parsimony were concerned and that I'd NEVER in a million years be able to beat it. Mum took a pot of left over beef casserole from the freezer for supper last night, cooked and mashed the spuds whilst the casserole defrosted and heated up in the nuker, only to find, as she poured the casserole over the mash, that it wasn't actually casserole, but a bit of gravy left over from a lamb shank dinner. Gravy. No lumps, no meat, no nothing. Just gravy. The War Office would be proud.

16 Years tomorrow........

I got married. I was 33 which, in comparison with my contemporaries, was pretty old for a starter marriage. It's lasted, though, unlike many, which makes me proud and incredulous in equal measure. I put it down to the lack of children and the fact that we had to stay friends (due to circumstances beyond our control) for a long time before becoming an official couple.

We've been out cycling today, only to the shops for a few bits and bobs, but it's good to get fresh air and a bit of healthy exercise. Back at home, we made a good dish of stuffed, baked vegetables - bought, unfortunately as the homegrown stuff isn't quite ready yet, but aubergines filled with a sort of paella with peppers and chorizo, flavoured with saffron, smoked pimenton and fennel tops and peppers stuffed with couscous, feta, the innards of the aubergines mixed with walnuts, onions and fresh mint and both served with a fresh tomato sauce served warm with fresh basil filled the hunger gap very effectively and tastily.

Unusually, we had a pud as well. I made a base of squished gingernuts mixed with a tiny bit of melted butter and a squeeze of lemon and pressed that into a mould. On the top, a mixture of cream cheese, lemon zest and double cream, topped off with fresh blueberries, dusted with icing sugar.

Quite festive for a Thursday..................

Keffir and the Art of Hayfever Maintenance

I'm waiting for it all to kick off. Normally by this time in the year and every year since I was seven years old, I'm awash with bogies, redly gritty-eyed and exhausted from long-lasting bouts of explosive sneezing. Once the trees start coming into leaf, that's me buggered for several months, even with copious amounts of druggage.

But, hush,hush, whisper who dares.........not this year. So far, so good.

I think it might be due to the keffir, although I'm still not convinced that it has quite all the mystical healing powers attributed to it by the pixieweb hippies. According to my reading, drinking or (God forbid after the one attempt I made) eating it can magically make your hair curl, cure you of scrofula, enable you to grow a huge penis (which could be slightly disconcerting if you weren't expecting it) or do one of many hundreds of things health related. However, as I have had not one sniff of hayfever since I started drinking the stuff in December and I've done nothing else of note towards effecting prevention, I've got to conclude the possibility. I'm still waiting for my penis...........

Economy, frugality, parsimony

I sit amidst the chaos of the 'Crisis' like a modern-day Madame Defarge, not knitting whilst guarding the steps of the guillotine and seeing off the aristos, but baking and doing interesting things with lentils in an effort to protect the remaining few sous from escaping the confines of the purse. We could all be 'sans coulottes' within a twelvemonth.........

However, being more Bree van de Kamp than Defarge in a physical sense (less whiskers, this being a 'good day'), I've been experimenting with a new loaf. This area suffers really badly from a lack of proper bakeries - there's one at Upper Snobton and a Maison Blanc at West Snobton, but really, £3.00 for a small rye? Otherwise, it's pain industriel from Pesko, Leadle or Morry's Sons - instant indigestion, anyone? Mmmm. Chorleywood process. The work of the very devil.

In an effort to replicate some of the deliciousness that I found over the last year living Abroad, I'm working on some bread recipes. Today's blends one third organic malted multigrain flour with a third organic wholemeal and a third organic rye. 2lbs of flour in all, 2oz butter rubbed in, 2 teaspoons salt. 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 tablespoons active yeast and 220ml warm water left to sponge, then topped up to 450ml with semi-skimmed milk. Made dough, left to rise for an hour, knocked back, slashed decoratively, dusted with maize flour for a bit of a crunchy crust, rose for another hour and a quarter, baked for 40 minutes at Gas 6. Robert's your mother's brother. The proof of gorgeousnes will be in the eating, but it looks fantastically golden and crusty and smells quite extraordinarily good.

It's a pity that the bready smell is somewhat overlaid by the aroma of burnt rhubarby sugar. The juice escaped from the dish. Arse. The rhubarb came from the market this morning - Bugville has a twice weekly market, normally shite, selling crap plastic goods and dreadful clothes to the tourists who flock here to the Holiday Camp. Lion print towel, large fragranced ball on curly string (Legend: Sniff my smelly ball - how we laugh every time we pass there....) or engraved crystal paperweight, anyone? Today, however, there was a nod to healthy living amongst the crap - a very nice fruit and veg stall - seasonal rhubarb, English asparagus, purple sprouting broc and Jerseys in between the imported Spanish strawberries, the rock-hard plums and the fragranceless pineapples. I may look in again.............

Bad news from Little Sissy. Redundancy. Good thing though,that she won't cry on the way back from work several times a week like she's been doing for the past year or so, nor get stressed about actually having to go into the office every Monday to work with a bunch of people who have no idea about business whatsoever. Bloody Flower Fairies. Bad thing if she can't immediately get another job. Sure she will, though.

And finally. I read today that the BBC are making a third series of Robin Hood, but minus Jonas Armstrong in the title role, which will be taken over by the bloke from Eastenders who played the one who married the dumpy blonde sister of the woman who owns the nightclub, but ran away when he found out the baby wasn't his. Now. Forgive me, but how are they going to write the change into the story? Robin goes off and comes back with new face and about a foot more height. I can only think -mediaeval plastic surgery following a bit of a ruck in the forest perhaps? OR, how's this? Robin's long-lost brother/cousin comes back from the Holy Wars with a message for him from Richard the Absent - present for anti-Muslim duties at his Maj's right hand, immediately. Robin goes off, llb/c takes his place as champion of poor/irritator of sheriff/pisser-off of Gisbourne. I can't get my head round it at all.

I don't know if I've done this right, but.....

I've been writing a blog that wasn't a blog for the past fourteen months, whilst studying abroad. The BTWAB came about because I had no internet access at the house and because I was too mean and stingy to go to the internet cafe and pay for the privilege, so I used to type a diary every day onto the laptop then, once a week, load it onto a lollystick and send it home here to Bugville where my friend Mr Bursar would disseminate it to interested parties. By the time I finally came back to Bugville (three weeks ago), it amounted to some 140,000 words, I'd become addicted to the actual process of 'getting something down' every day and my readership had become addicted to reading it.

Here we are then.

It's a cold, wet old day in Bugville in deep contrast to yesterday when The Boy and I spent the day in the garden, readying it for the glorious summer we're (perhaps) going to have. We borrowed Little B and Mr Bursar's power washer and wooshed three years of mould off the verandah which doesn't sound too exciting, but when we'd finished and it was back to woody not mossy and we sat there drinking wine in a self-congratulatory way, we were quite excited. Such is the stuff of life for the Pinnywearer.

The Boy has filled the greenhouse with teeny little trays of salading seedlings, the peas are planted out, the back raised border is dug over and ready for brassicas and beans, the tom plants are coming on apace, the little raised beds are full of green shoots and the spuds are earthed up. There's a new cucumber house, the butternuts have sprouted and the courgette plants are perky and healthy, as we will be when we've chewed our way through that lot later int he year.

The Boy has added a new recipe to his repertoire. He is a fine cook, in the Jamie mould, having had to hone his skills or starve to death whilst I was away, but he tends to stick to the same things. No sin in that, says I, but ragout, risotto, slow roasted meats and sausage, mash and onion gravy get a little dull after a while. Yesterday we introduced him to the fine art of the salade tiede, comprising frisee from the garden, eggs poached from scratch without the aid of a plastic egg poacher, a fine vinaigrette flavoured with fresh tarragon from the herb patch and crispy bacon lardons. As this dish requires skills and timing to get it right (don't dress the salad too early, don't overdo the eggs and remember to dry and trim them whilst still keeping them hot, keep the bacon warm and get them and the warm dressing onto the egg p.d.q), it was a pretty startlingly good first attempt. We ate it with rye bread and followed it with a Coq au vin blanc, leeks from the garden and steamed spuds with parsley butter.

Today, I've been watching the rain sheet down, doing the ironing and getting the expenses plugged into the spreadsheet as the VAT is due at the end of the week. Darling giveth and he taketh away..............