Anyone for Marmalade?

So, like a good bear, come the end of January I wriggled my nose, curled my toes and then stretched languourously before deciding it might be time to get up. This was such an exhausting decision that I had to go back to bed to ponder it more thoroughly.

Of course I did also have to get out of bed in order to do some work, eat a great deal of food, very little of which was my five a day rations, and to watch rubbish on television.

By last weekend I emerged tousle headed and determined to stay awake for the whole weekend. As I had someone staying it seemed like a good hostess type thing to do. Be awake. It is now some months since I have had a free weekend so I was rather grumpy about the whole thing, particularly since my guest is renowned for waking very early. No lazy mornings for me then.

It was therefore ironic that when I dragged myself from my bed at 8.30 on Sunday morning there was not a peep to be heard from the spare bedroom. Admittedly vast quantities of wine had been shipped the night before, and I had some left a very tantalising quantity of books by the bed for midnight and dawn reading material but still... I cleared up from the night before, and laid breakfast. The Loyal Hound and I went for a long walk. We read the remnants of the Saturday paper. We tried not to feel bitter about the fact that we could have still been asleep. Then, like a vision on the road to Damascus, my eye fell upon a plastic bag that one of the supper guests from the night before had brought me. Marmalade oranges. Aaaha. My mission was clear. I must use this time to make marmalade.

I would generally consider myself to be an accomplished cook. I will try most things and have recently merrily made puff pastry, cooked fillet steak for 17 and made a tart that would have been put in pride of place in the window of Patisserie Valerie. How tricky could marmalade possibly be?

Four days later, as I clean up the last of the chaos that one batch of marmalade caused I realise the error of my ways. Making Marmalade it seems, is like travelling to the arctic. You should not set about it unprepared.

Several hours (well, it felt like hours) of squeezing, chopping and weighing later I had the contents in a pan simmering away. The kitchen was a sticky mess of juice, escaped pips and fruit pulp. At this moment my houseguest emerged from her room. Turned out she had woken at four and picked up one of the books I had left for her. unable to put it down she had read it until she finished it then collapsed in a state of exhaustion and slept until 10.30... Sorry. I digress.

So, lucky her comes down for breakfast to find me covered in bits of orange, the kitchen covered in bits of orange and the marmalade simmering on the stove. No sign of any breakfast for her or anything like that. She took it well.

We decided a walk was the way forwards so I put the pan in the oven to carry on doing it's thing and off we went. Upon our return I found that the muslin bag of pulp and pips had gently floated to the top of the pan, like a corpse in a crime drama, and had then scorched itself. MMm. Nice added flavour. I carried on regardless.

My guest, who had a long journey ahead of her and was probably afraid of becoming covered in marmalade, left after an early lunch and I decided to finish making said marmalade. At this point I discover that I didn't have quite as much sugar as I had assumed. What I had was thrown in, along with the coffee sugar that was welded to the bottom of the pot. The marmalade came to the boil and I dumped in the thermometer. Glancing at it, it did seem strange that it was already at a temperature that was nearing the top of the marker. Naturally I did not investigate any further for a good few minutes at which point I discover that the bulb on the thermometer had smashed.

The question is, did it smash in the marmalade, or in the drawer??? What the hell. It was probably in the drawer and as it wasn't a mercury thermometer I was unlikely to have poisoned the batch too badly.

At this point I start hunting for jars to discover that I have been ruthlessly throwing empty jars away and have scarcely any left. A quick sweep around the kitchen turned up a few 'nearly empties' which were ruthlessly scraped clean and washed. It was then time to decant the wretched stuff.

Using a handy plastic jug I then proceeded to spread marmalade all over the kitchen. It dripped on the oven, it slimed down the side of the boiler. It splatted on the floor where I promptly trod on it and spread it all over the kitchen. As I discovered later that day it also dripped on the chair, where I then proceeded to sit on it. Very little of it seemed to actually make it into the jars.

The end result was chaos. The marmalade that made it into the pots looks good but I am too nervous to try it in case I get a bit of glass bulb or thermometer liquid flavour. Then there is the nice undertone of schorched muslin to watch out for. It looks good. But as we know, looks aren't everything. See, here it is:



It wasn't worth it. I'm sticking to jams, jellies and puff pastry as the easier option. Shop marmalade will be just fine thank you. It's not worth risking life and limb for this. The only question left is this: Who wants a pot of marmalade? I have several looking for good homes......

Struggling to start the New Year

I am really struggling to get into the swing of the new year. I can't seem to get my head around the fact that it is January and I need to be all proactive and filled with New Year's resolutions. Instead I seem to be struggling to get up in the morning, let alone earn a living, clean the house, brush my hair and do all those other things that we should tackle with savoir faire and enthusiasm. Is it just me?

I normally like January. I like getting Christmas out of the way and having a clean slate that I can scribble all over indecisively.

I blame the snow. It has given me a strange extended holiday from the world and now I can't seem to reconnect. Instead my urge to hibernate has emerged and is constantly snarling at me that I should be eating fattening things and sleeping through the bad weather. As a result of this I am barely distinguishable from this:




So to all those wannabe hibernators out there. You are not alone.

In, Out, In, Out - shake it all about.

I made it out, I made it back in again. Now I am sitting watching the snow fall and plotting how I pack for three days of work meetings in just one small bag that I can carry, whilst wearing suitable clothes that I can walk out in this afternoon. Not only do I need clothes but also work stuff. I may have to do two trips to the car which is a real bore. I think that minimal changes are the way forwards and I shall have to risk smelling by the time Thursday comes around...

It is bloody snowing AGAIN. Another two inches overnight and more as I watch. It is also drifting which will make the road over the hill fun to traverse. If one more person tells me 'it is thawing now' I shall come down off my mountain like an enraged yeti and stuff snow in their mouth until they eat their words....

Wolf at the door (well, panther apparently...)

Three friends took great pleasure in ringing me yesterday to tell me that the local paper has headlined the fact that PANTHER TRACKS were seen in the snow just 1/4 a mile away from my house.... Oh joy. Not only do I have snow to deal with and icicles taller than me that plunge off the house at intermittent points, but now there is supposedly a 'third generation big cat' roaming the woods around my house. Could life become trickier? Will the chewed bones of the loyal hound and I be discovered in the spring?

Luckily I got online and read the article where in very small print at the end of it Chester Zoo suggested that rather than a panther, the tracks could be that of an otter. Normally this would comfort me but having seen where the tracks where I'm not convinced that anything other than a cat could have walked there. The tracks were on the top of the fall side of the dam which is some 80 feet high and a gradient that makes me feel sick looking over it. I guess they must be otters who don't suffer from vertigo.... Please let them be otters.

So, now I am walking out and about in my strimmer glasses and wielding the carving knife in case of a surprise otter / panther attack. It makes going outside more interesting I suppose.

I made a break for freedom yesterday. The Loyal Hound and I walked the half mile or so through the snow and were picked up by a friend with a 4 x 4 and we went to the nearest town. The excitement. The bright lights, the people! It was almost too much for me. We went to the supermarket and I chose all my shopping on a weight basis as I would have to carry it back. So, I now have mushrooms, spinach and maltesers to see me through the next couple of days and to give some variety to the diet of porridge. Exciting n'est pas?

My neighbour fought his way back home yesterday as well. He had been out the day of the blizzard and hadn't managed to make it back until now. We walked through the woods together. Me laden with groceries and him towing a gas bottle and a sack of pony food for the horses. He then very kindly shovelled a path through the snow to my gate which I had not got round to yet (I was going with the wading through the stuff idea). There is so much snow I can't actually open the gate but now I do have a path to it so it is all progress. I have dug myself a path around the house and to the woodshed so it feels positively civilized here now as I can go out in just boots if I stick to the paths. It's all progress.

My next task is to come up with some kind of a plan for the weekend. I am supposed to be going away to stay with friends and feel it would be rather wimpish to cancel because of the snow. But, I am not keen on the idea of lugging a suitcase off the hill. I wonder if I should try a 'wear all my clothes at once' number and walk them off, then hope that I can get my car started once I get to it. If I leave in the daylight this shouldn't be too bad. I mean I'll look madder than usual wearing my party clothes with my rubber trousers but that can't be helped. It's either that or I spend the next few hours making a rucksack out of curtains and coal sacks. Suggestions on a postcard please...

Mad woman on a mountain

I know, it's been a long time since I was here. I didn't die or anything. Life just escaped me for a while. Builders, Christmas, a crushed finger, snow. The usual excuses. Now I am marooned and there are no excuses not to return. There is a possibility that overnight the hovel, loyal hound and I were whisked off to Switzerland. The only reason I know this isn't the case is that there is no chair lift or gluwhein in sight. Instead there is snow. nothing but snow. So much snow that I have had to shovel a path to my woodshed. You want to see a picture? ok - here's one for you...



I should point out that I took this photo before it started snowing yesterday, when another 7" fell.....

I know that many are excited about the snow but I am on my third week of being snowed in and am thoroughly bored now. I had to evacuate the week before Christmas and ended up spending a fortnight over Christmas with my parents and family. It was about 12 days too long in my book. Carless, and with a house only 7 miles away that I couldn't get to, I was rapidly entering a state of madness. Chutney Mary and the nephews were not too bad but the Box of Frogs had brought her new man home for Christmas and they were lucky to escape with their lives as I was ready to commit foul and dastardly Midsummer Moider style acts after day 2. By day 9 I could barely look either of them in the eye without snarling. Friendly aren't I?

On Sunday I made it home in a combination of four wheel drive vehicles, toboggans and foot slogging and the relief at being back in my own house delicious.

So what happened whilst I was away from cyberspace? The crushed finger was an exciting interlude. I'll set the scene. The builders had finished and after spending three weeks stripping woodchip off the walls and then two weeks painting I was nearly finished. All that was needed was a bit more painting and the carpets to be delivered and laid.

The carpet arrived in a 25 metre x 4 metre roll. Unfortunately the carpet layers didn't arrive. The delivery man was determined to lift nothing more than a piece of paper so my batty neighbour, his ex girlfriend and the postman were roped in. We hauled the carpet onto a ladder and struggled to pull it out of the van into the barn. As the ladder came off the van, the weight kicked in. Everybody apart from me dropped the ladder and my finger was left, trapped between it and the floor. Much cursing and swearing ensued. Then pain. a lot of pain. This being me, I didn't go to the doctor on the basis of 'what would he do anyway?'. By Thursday I gave up and went to see him. He promptly said 'Aaaah yes. You have crushed the bones in your fingertip and the nail needs to come out. Come back tomorrow'. Clutching my arm to my chest I went off and licked my wounds for 24 hours. When I returned he injected my finger with local anaesthetic and then, WITHOUT WAITING FOR IT TO WORK he pulled my finger nail out with a pair of pliers. The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on this man.

Cue shrieks of pain from me and gasps of horror from the nurse who had me pinned to the table. The doctor gave me a scathing look and said 'pull yourself together'. I resisted punching him with my good hand and then shrieked some more as he re crushed all the bones in the finger. ('just checking to see if they are broken - they are!') I'm never going to a doctor again.

Two weeks later the finger felt better but I had torn all the muscles in my shoulder from holding the finger up to my chest (as instructed by the doctor). Why not give me a sling? Apparently this was not worth doing. It would be much better to make me spend over a hundred much needed pounds at the physiotherapist thank you.

This incident put another delay on my life. No painting, no typing and no sleep as the finger / shoulder worked hard to keep me awake. This was a little bit gutting. Having lived on a building site for six weeks all I had been looking forward to was the nice bit at the end when I put the furniture back, cleaned like a lunatic and painted. Instead everything had to be done one handed and at a snail's pace. I could have wept (actually, at one point, I did). This really was a time when I was Single and only just surviving. I longed to have someone else here who could help.

I am now entering a state of cabin fever and rely on all of you to keep me in touch with the world. There are people out there aren't there???? I am living on porridge and cigarettes and am running low on both so tomorrow I will fight through 3/4 mile of snow and see if I can find someone with a four wheel drive to give me a lift to the shops and back. The road over the mountain is not for the faint of heart. The drifts are 8' high the road has been reduced from a wide two lane tarmac ribbon to a single lane of icy slush between the drifts.

I have already brought in two wheelbarrows of logs and dug the loyal hound out of a drift that he misjudged. The reservoir is frozen over and snowed on and looks beautiful. In some ways it is a good thing there is nobody up here at the moment. I must look like a madwoman. When it is snowing hard my stylish outdoor wear consists of a pair of boots with rubber trousers over them to stop the snow filling my wellingtons (actually I have to wear that delightful part of the ensemble all the time now as the snow is too deep to walk in without the trousers). Top half? Coat, gloves, russian style hat with ear flaps and yesterday I was reduced to wearing my strimmer glasses as I couldn't look up into the snow without them. I am the mad woman on the mountain.....