Bank Holiday Monday

As D reminded me this morning, it's the last Bank Holiday before Christmas.  Ho ho ho.  Something of a lazy day really, we went to the World Peace Cafe at the Meditation Centre for lunch and were yet again ignored by the resident cat.  Lunch was very nice anyway, and to make up for the fact that I not only ate D's chocolate that came with our coffee, but also his olives, I made him some more gingerbread cupcakes when we got home.  Photo-wise I only managed a couple of flower photos in our tiny front garden, as well as one or two in the grounds at Kelmarsh.  Oh well, back to work tomorrow it is...

Sunday in the park...

I actually took my camera with me on this morning's walk.  It was cool, blustery and just a great morning to be out of doors.  We got to Bradgate Park at about 7.30a.m. and slogged up to Old John where we met a group of fellow masochists who kindly offered us food.  We unwillingly declined as we had our hike in front of us and then after admiring the view for a few moments, set off downhill trying to avoid two stags standing on the path who were 'looking at us in a funny way'.  We made it around our normal route in record time without mishap (apart from Cath almost falling off the path) and decided we must be getting fitter as we didn't feel as if we needed oxygen quite as badly as usual after tackling the last hill back up to the car park.  Something strange happened on the way home though, we had to nip into Sainsburys (post-Starbucks) and I picked up a copy of the Mail on Sunday for D as it had a feature on Nigella.  It's not a paper I'd normally even put in my rabbit's cage but D loves Nigella so it had to be done (I like to think he would have done the same for me if it were George Cloony).  What was really odd is that I had to be over 16 to buy it.  I kid you not, it said on my receipt that the checkout operator confirmed I was old enough so I asked her about it.  Was it the fact that the Mail is such an awful paper it can't be allowed to corrupt the young, or just that Nigella was seductively inviting people to 'come into my kitchen' on the cover of the magazine, wearing a dress that looked as if Dulux had had a hand in spraying it on her?  One of life's little mysteries...

Old John with rather dramatic cloud formation...

Apologies for the poor quality of this one - the stag was so close to us I became inept and couldn't change the settings on my camera in time!  He was posing so nicely too...

The views make it all worthwhile...

At least this bit's downhill...

I love the look of red berries and have to take a photo of them whenever I see them - it's like a pavlovian reflex...

Not a Bradgate Park wild rabbit.

This is Ben snuggling up to D this morning to watch the Grand Prix

Two for the price of one...

We stopped off at the beautiful Compton Verney in Warwickshire today so my second blog of the day is a few photos from there.  I always feel as if I'm about to take part in a Jane Austen tv adaptation when I walk over the bridge and see the house!

Books, books everywhere...

Considering how much I've had to read for my degrees, and how much I enjoy reading, I think this blog has been pretty sparse on the book front.  So a little about my book history.  We never had many books in the house when I was a child, although both my Mum and Dad enjoyed reading and used the library (Dad was into SciFi, Mum into crime writers like Agatha Christie).  I do remember working my way through abridged children's classics such as Little Women (and the sequels), Black Beauty (which I'm convinced traumatised me, I can still remember how upset I was about Ginger), and Treasure Island.  Although I could read before I started school, when I did get there I was, ironically enough, given 'special' lessons as it was thought I couldn't read and was generally a bit slow.  The reason I didn't read there was that I hated going, didn't like my teacher and didn't like reading words on cards. I wanted to read stories!  Thankfully a teacher from another class (my teacher dragged me into it one day in anger and left me there - she really was an evil woman!) must have decided to give me the benefit of the doubt and gave me (I can still remember the title) Gold Book Two: Moonshine and Magic, which children three or four years older than I was were reading, and I never looked back.  When I started getting pocket money I bought all the Famous Five and Secret Seven books, and carried on with Mallory Towers and St Claire's, then the What Katy Did... and Anne of Green Gables books.  I also loved the Moomin books and Elizabeth Enright's books about the American Melendy family, which I desperately wanted to be part of (I might have to buy and re-read these now I'm thinking about it)!   As I got older it changed to Agathie Christie and Mary Stewart, then for a few years in my teens I hardly read at all, although I seem to remember loving Tess of the D'Urbervilles. 

When I started studying for my degree it was strange having to read certain books.  If I was struggling with one I'd just divide it into say 10 or 20 page blocks and give myself a quota to read a day.  Just a few highlights were: The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Behind a Mask Louisa M Alcott, Dombey and Son Charles Dickens, Middlemarch George Eliot, Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, Evelina by Frances Burney (wonderful writer), Caleb Williams by William Godwin, and just about all the poetry we studied.  Poetry was a major discovery for me as we never did any at school (I went to a pretty abysmal school), now I love it.  Of late I've enjoyed reading Jasper Fforde's series of books about Thursday Next (but not the nursery rhyme ones), Lindsey Davis' Falco novels, and John Connolly's crime novels with a supernatural twist.  I love Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, and one of my most treasured possessions is a card from him congratulating me on my MA!

I used to have six tall book cases in my study in our old house, all crammed from top to bottom.  When we moved here I did have to be rather ruthless in culling them.  I now have four in my 'den', with a small one especially for Will in the living room.  D has three of his own! 

I do try to keep my books in some kind of order... it doesn't always work.  These are poetry, lit crit and theory and some 18th C novels, along with books people have given or lent me and I don't know if I'll get around to reading them...

18th C and 19th C novels, with quite a lot of Thomas Hardy...

19th C and onwards novels, biography, and anything else that has been shoved on there!

Lindsey Davis, John Connolly, history, psychology, books I didn't even know I owned...

Will (plus Posky's silver bow tie is on there for some reason...)

Almost forgot, these are the Art History books...

I now try to be pretty ruthless about acquiring books - if it's a modern fiction paperback (usually acquired from St Mary's Church bookshop or a local charity shop), I don't tend to keep it but pass it on to someone else.  Non-fiction, poetry and classic novels usually get squeezed in somewhere.

Cupcakes!

There seems to be a cupcake obsession going on at the moment so I decided to join in.  D bought me this:

There is nothing to not like about this book...

As I hadn't tried any recipes from it yet, this week I was determined to make something.  I read how nice the Gingerbread Cupcakes were on Scottish Vegan Homemaker's old blog so decided to have a go.  I omitted the topping as this was a trial run but the cakes were delicious anyway, as verified by D.  The two main things I learned from baking these are that it is hard to measure golden syrup (apparently an ice-cream scoop helps), and that the remnants of raw cake mixture left in the bowl taste very nice.  I'm taking some of the cakes to work for our coffee break but won't mention the word v*gan until they've been eaten! 

Result!

Wet Monday

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky

of this black August.  My sister, the sun,

broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goest to hell; the mountains fume

like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,

she will not rise and turn off the rain.

The wonderful Derek Walcott says it all really, this is a small section of the poem Dark August which was  poem for the day on Saturday (in the book Poem for the Day Two).  Very apt considering what's happening in the world.  On a much lesser scale we also had very bizarre weather yesterday - one minute torrential rain running down the street where I work, the next brilliant sunshine.  D ran outside last night with my camera to snap a photo of a rainbow before it disappeared.  I was in the bathroom using my eyedrops so missed the whole thing!

I did manage to snap a couple of images on my phone at Bradgate Park when out for the weekly cross country.  The first is of the deer - they are absolutely beautiful and are so used to people that they will stand quite close to the path.  The second is just an amazingly large mushroom or toadstool growing in the bracken.

B is for Batsford Arboretum

Spent a very pleasant time at Batsford Arboretum in Gloucestershire yesterday - such a beautiful place, it used to be part of the estate of Batsford Hall, home to the Mitfords.  It's quite oriental in feel, with a Japanese bridge, statues of a Foo Dog and Buddha, and a Japanese Rest House, as well as Japanese Maples at every turn.  We hope to go back at the beginning of October to see the trees in their autumn colours.  Funniest moment was visiting the Hermit's Cave, which actually appeared to have a hermit in it playing a drum - very pythonesque...

Leaks, and other vegetables...

Slight crises last night. I was a little over-enthusiastic when washing my hair in the shower and didn't notice the shower curtain had slipped inside the bath. The result was a soaking wet carpet in the bathroom and water dripping down the chimney breast onto the wooden mantel in the living room. David was running around with towels etc like a thing possessed.

This begs two questions: why is the shower against the wrong wall so it doesn't reach out into the bath? And why is there carpet in the bathroom? This doesn't acquit me from blame (I heard David telling Charlie it was my fault) but I think allows for mitigating circumstances, along with the fact I am very shortsighted and can barely see where the bath is let alone the shower curtain when I don't have my glasses on.

The evidence against me...

Oh well... the evening wasn't a complete waste of time as I threw half a butternut squash that was on the verge of being thrown out into a roasting tin with half a marrow, an onion, and a carrot, sprinkled them with cinnamon and nutmeg and roasted them. I then put them in a pan with some stock and made some soup that looks like mud but smells gorgeous. And I still have some home-made bread left to go with it.

Bought two magazines yesterday (HOW expensive????), Good Food and Country Living. I bought GF as I was hoping for a discount voucher for the Good Food show in November that Cath and I want to go to. I was very disappointed in the lack of veggie recipes in it, and astounded at the lifestyles of the people in CL. (It says it's a complete lifestyle magazine... I'm not sure what a lifestyle is, and even less sure that I have one). I've lived in rural England all of my life but this was a different world... houses overlooking National Parks, bottling fruit from the orchard, and interior designers used for advice on wallpapers. The cats seemed to like the magazine anyway - they each took turns to fall asleep on it.

Posky approves of this particular lifestyle...

From the ridiculous to the sublime - went to St Mary's Church to browse their bookshop at lunchtime.  Came back with a haul of classic children's books (plus a William Boyd), one of which was Anne of Green Gables which I had to start reading straight away.  I'd forgotten how well written it is, wonderful characters and so funny too.

Book haul...

As if that wasn't enough to raise the spirits, my favourite season of the year is on its way as evidenced by the leaves on my acer - Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, etc etc etc.  I sense some good photo opportunities coming up...

A few things I like...

Butternut squash...

The colour of these veggies waiting to be roasted and made into soup...

Dark chocolate soya dessert - oh my!

The fairy lights on my bookcases...

Goes without saying...

My pottery oil burner...

Lapsang Souchong...

The rain... Pepper and the garden Buddah approve too...

The spicey cookies that I made (only have Christmas and Halloween shaped cookie cutters, hence the bats!)

The portrait of Will we have hanging in the hall

A nice Sunday...

 I won't talk about Saturday which, due to male ineptitude and general unpleasantness was written-off, but Sunday was great.  I left everyone else asleep then went to pick Cath up for our Sunday morning yomp around Bradgate Park.

Charlie demonstrates the 'after breakfast, before mid-morning snack' sleeping position

Whilst Pod does her 'cushion slug' pose

How can a day not go well which starts with your best friend giving you a BIG jar of giant olives at 7a.m?  I love olives... it says on the jar these have to be eaten within two weeks of opening - it won't be a problem. 

THE OLIVES!!

Then it was off to Bradgate Park.  It was misty, cool and damp, a hint of autumn in the air.  We started off by climbing up to Old John, a folly on top of the highest hill in the park with fantastic views, then to the War Memorial and then we just walked for an hour and a half.  It was a lovely morning with the deer appearing out of the mist and the bracken just beginning to turn.  By the time we made it up the last hill back to the car park the sun had burned through and we were hot, tired and very ready to collapse in Starbucks on the way home!

Old John

The War Memorial

The Park deer

The reward!

Then it was home, shower, change and I then decided to go to the meditation centre at Kelmarsh in the depths of Northamptonshire for lunch.  It is a lovely, tranquil place with a World Peace Cafe which serves the nicest veggie food.  D hadn't been before but was impressed.  They have a lovely black cat who lives there but who ignored me despite my overtures of friendship. 

The Kelmarsh Panther - guarding the path to enlightenment...

D then wanted to visit Harrington, a place not far from Kelmarsh with an abandoned airfield.  We walked probably a couple of miles up the taxi-way and back - me admiring the view and enjoying the peace and quiet, D taking photos of old concrete bunkers.

Yet more walking...

Then it was home with enough time to catch a few more episodes of The West Wing on DVD before bed.  What's not to like?