Potato Day

From Burns Night to Potato Day - such an exciting life I lead . 'Potato Day?', I hear you asking - go on, don't deny you're riveted by the title of this post. Calm yourself, I'm about to reveal all. A Potato Day is kind of like a Craft Fayre only instead of Crafts, you have the opportunity to buy seed potatoes. There were over 140 varieties of seed potato on sale. I've already placed an order for 3 kg each of Foremost and Saxon with another plotholder, but it seemed an idea to go along to see what it's all about. Do you know it was so exciting that the local news team were there filming as we arrived - I kid you not! We paid our £2 each to get in and wandered round looking at ... well .... potatoes. Oh, and there were some gimmicky copper gardening tools, just to ring the changes, not to mention the onion sets in one corner and the heritage seed swap in another, but mostly it was seed potatoes. I bought 3 tubers each of Estima, Sante, Anoe (Claire), Golden Wonder and Amandine plus a 1kg of Stuttgart Giant onion sets. The tubers were 14p each, and the bag of onions was £1, so in total it cost £3.10 plus the £4 entry, plus the fuel costs, and then of course we stopped for a pub lunch - and I'm thinking that if you add that all up, it comes to very expensive potatoes. However, it's good to try these things or you don't know what you might be missing. Don't think I'll be going next year.

Last night's dancing was extremely energetic - the unfit were falling by the wayside, but us regular dancers were up for (almost) every dance and enjoying the exuberance of it all. The only thing I wasn't keen on was the lone piper in the foyer. In a contained space, bagpipes are decidedly overpowering, and the poor guy was really breaking sweat. Anyway, the good news is the dancing took my mind off the migraine for a while (probably brought on by Thursday's Chinese lunch). Felt a bit fragile when I woke up this morning but I'm trying a mind over body thing of telling myself I gain nothing from being sick. As a kid, illness used to get me out of school a lot when I was going through a bad time of being bullied which may have set the stage for ill-health cutting in whenever I'm feeling double-minded about something. 'A Course in Miracles' talks about the power of the ego and it makes a lot of sense.

Burns Night

I've had a clumsy day today - hoping it doesn't carry on to be a clumsy evening as that could get embarrassing...

In the new shed over the allotment, Brian has put up a thick plywood backboard (from which I can suspend tools) and a couple of plywood shelves. At home the garage is packed with carefully hoarded leftovers from years gone by, so without too much difficulty I was able to acquire half a tin of teak-coloured wood preserver to treat the plywood. It was a pleasant task, not requiring a great deal of finesse, and as I happily wielded the wood-stain loaded brush, my thoughts were trundling off in other directions not paying much attention to what I was doing. Then I almost dropped the brush, which made me jerk the other hand carrying the tin, which slopped a large quantity of the deep brown liquid over my hand, wrist and the floor. I was wearing latex gloves, but they didn't extend up the wrists. I mopped up as best I could with the kitchen towels I happened to have to hand and carried on to finish the job, then came home and discarded the ruined top I'd been wearing and washed off as much as possible of the wood preserver, leaving only a suggestion of an odd-shaped area of tan.

Whilst cooking the dinner I spilled a quantity of uncooked rice, then slopped soup out of the bowls, then dropped the loaf of bread. Tonight I'm off to a Burns Night Ceilidh , and would rather like to engage in some graceful dancing. Let's hope the 'clumsy' virus has passed out of my system.

A traditional Burns Night Celebration usually includes a supper of Haggis and bashed neeps, and I can't recall any barn dances I've been to which haven't included a meal, but apparently tonight's doesn't. Oh well, more time for dancing, I suppose.

Ladies Who Lunch

Last night's Cell Group meeting went ok - the Krispy cakes were popular, the gluten-free sponge drops less so, unsurprisingly. Vic had tried one beforehand and complained that they sucked all the moisture out of your mouth, an attribute I felt duty-bound to mention as I placed them on the table and invited people to help themselves. He also suggested I should pretend they had been made by a primary-school child as the lemon icing was of less-than-professional standard, to put it politely :-)

One thing did make me smile inwardly was noticing a speck of glitter on Christina's face. I'm guessing she caught it from me when we embraced in a girly-greeting. That stuff gets EVERYWHERE! It's from the party top I wore at Christmas. I popped it into a pillowcase to wash it, the same pillow-case I use to wash my bras in (so that the hooks don't catch on other clothes). Of course, it was all over the next bra I washed. I tried to shake some of it off, and then had to hoover the kitchen. We've probably inhaled specks - wonder if they'll show up on an X-ray :-)

Went for a girly lunch in the local chinatown eat-all-you-want buffet restaurant, which was very pleasant. There were five in the group, 3 from Cell group, one friend from the allotments plus her friend from U3A. I walked there and back, maybe a mile and a quarter each way, to atone for the unnecessarily large number of calories I've eaten today. Dance class tonight should help on that score, too. Over lunch we talked about making it a regular thing for a group of ladies to meet together and encourage each other in goal-setting and attainment. On the way I passed the Baptist church and considered joining their Scrabble club, meeting on Tuesday mornings, with the option to stay for lunch afterwards. On the other hand, I won't have quite so much spare time on my hands if I get the job I'm attending a recruitment/training day for next week. We'll see. Meanwhile I'm keeping the grey cells active with Sudoku puzzles, and occasionally still keeping up my Brain Age Training on David's Nintendo DS. I've been reluctant to re-do the Brain Age test since I scored 30, and Dr Kawashima admitted he was impressed :-)

Now I'm waiting in for the Window Installers to come and replace a pane that has cracked, and casting the odd longing glance out of the window at the clear blue sky and winter sunshine. Would have been a nice day to go over the allotment.

Growing herbs, growing cultures, growing waistline

Knowing my interest in growing things and in healthy eating, David gave me this very fancy herb garden for Christmas/birthday. Each day we marvel at the speed with which the herbs grow: mint, italian basil, dill, cilantro along the back row, parsley (yet to put in an appearance), purple basil, chives in front. Looking forward to trying out some of the suggested recipes.

At the weekend I decided I wanted to start making my own yoghurt again (it was something I used to do years ago). The first two batches failed. I was using Onken bio-pot natural yoghurt as a starter and wondered if the problem lay there, so yesterday I tried a teaspoon of Yeo Valley yoghurt as the starter, and left it well-wrapped up in tea towels overnight. Success!

Tonight Cell Group is meeting here, so this has been my excuse to make a batch of Chocolate Krispy cakes and a batch of lemon-iced gluten-free sponge drops. So much for the planned 'healthy eating' regime to get me back in shape! The gluten-free sponge drops were experimental, and absorbed in what I was doing, I missed an appointment with the psych - unusual for me. At the point I remembered it, and realised I was late, the phone rang. As I answered it, I accidentally pushed a button which cut off the call. Assuming it had been from the psych ringing to see why I hadn't turned up, I dialled her number and gave my apologies, and we re-scheduled the appointment. During the course of our conversation, I realised the phone call I had cut off hadn't been from her after all. I dialled 1471, listened long enough to hear the number of the last caller, then dialled it. Had I listened longer, I would have discovered that the last recorded number to call had been at 10.40 am. How the phone rang at 1.10 pm is a mystery. My favoured explanation is that it happened to get my attention.

Goodbye Spencer

Spencer was a lovely great softy, thoroughly enjoying having his tummy rubbed, as you can see from this photo. He settled in and had a lovely week with us, but having thought the answer to the fecal incontinence query hanging over him was the presence or absence of suitable shrubs, as the week progressed it became clear there was something else going on. When we picked him up, I'd noticed that his left eye was drooping a little, although this wasn't mentioned in his medical notes. Three days into his stay and the eye was drooping even further, after a night when he'd been fretful and unsettled. I mentioned it to the Fostering manager and she asked us to bring him back for a brain scan. We took him back on the Saturday, and today learned the sad news that the scan showed he'd had a stroke, and they hadn't wakened him from the anaesthetic.

Welcome Spencer!

Today, 5th January 2008, we greet a new short-term addition to the family. Spencer is a large, elderly male labrador. He weighs around 45 kg and was picked up as a stray by Battersea Dogs' Home, London, early in December. He is somewhere between 7 - 10 years old with a few health problems. The Dogs' Home has a foster programme and Spencer is our first assignment. I was offered a choice (sight unseen) between Spencer and Jasper (a labrador cross, aged between 6 and 12 months). Jasper sounded very cute but possibly quite a demanding handful.

We were told Spencer was 'very clean in his kennel', but outside appeared to suffer from fecal incontinence as he wasn't stopping to squat, simply walking on apparently unaware of what was happening at the other end. It wasn't clear whether this was a behavioural issue, related to the stress of being in kennels, or if there could be some other explanation.

He jumped into the back of the estate car without hesitation, allowed me to harness him in and settled down happily for the ride. Once home, I walked him straight through into the garden and let him off the lead. After cocking his leg a few times, he began combing the shrubbery for the right place to squat, finally backing his butt onto (yes, in contact with) a prickly young holly bush. It didn't look the most comfortable place, but evidently it met his requirements and he proved that given the right circumstances, he would take the time to pause and reflect on the moment. I praised him.

We brought him indoors and showed him his lovely new doggy-duvet (all equipment, food, toys, medicine etc. is provided by the Dogs' Home). He was so excited, he immediately dug in, ripped the duvet from its cover and tore a hole in it before we could convince him to give it up. He'd only been in the house a matter of minutes and feathers were flying already! Not a good start! We removed the luxury feather duvet from its cover, replacing it with some old blankets and towels and checked his response - one sniff and he dismissed it as of no further interest..

I sewed up the hole in the duvet to prevent any further feather-loss and hoovered up the feathers. At this point we had confined Spencer to the kitchen, but I opened the door into the lounge to check out his reaction. He walked in to inspect ... and promptly decided the house-plants needed watering. I told him "NO!" very firmly (don't want the maid becoming upset that he's taken over her job). I took him outside again and praised him each time he cocked his leg out there, then brought him back inside to try again. Same result - although he does respond to the "NO!". Back outside again, plenty of praise when he cocks his leg out there, then back in again - to sniff the houseplants and cock his leg yet again. Stubborn old boy. Yet he's fine in the kitchen - no houseplants there.

After we'd had lunch and Spencer had had a chance to settle in (confined to the kitchen), I took him out for a walk. Originally I was intending to walk over the allotment and back, to check out his stamina. However, by the time we'd gone a quarter of a mile I realised I might not have the stamina - it was proving quite strenuous work walking him as he was pulling with all his weight. I replotted the walk to around the block (about a mile). Then we came to a place where he began to look purposeful, sniffing the shrubbery with excitement. Once again he squatted right in the shrubbery, with a bush up his backside, and produced a diarrhoea dump. Fortunately it was quite easy to scoop it up in the bag I'd taken for the purpose and drop it into the doggy-poop bin further along our walk. Once he'd done his business, his pace did settle down and he was more inclined to walk alongside me on a loose lead, and acknowledged the praise with a waggy tail.

I think we may have solved the question about the fecal incontinence - the Dogs' Home has some outside dog runs where the dogs are exercised, but these are all tarmac with no greenery, and Spencer does seem to prefer to hide in the bushes to perform.

Talking Newspaper - barely a whisper

I felt privileged to be chosen to read for the Christmas edition of the local Talking Newspaper. All seemed to be going smoothly as we set up until the technician discovered the eject button was pushed right in on the recording deck. After some experimentation he discovered the tape drawer would automatically eject when he turned the power off, so we thought we were set to go and he did the sound level checks ... but then discovered that the recording sounded distorted. He changed the master tape and tried again ... same result. Both tapes had been folded in on themselves. He looked in the tape drawer and found that a cotton bud (used to clean the recording heads) had dropped down inside. No tools to remove it, but after much fiddling with a pen and a pair of scissors, he managed to wriggle it out. With a third master tape in the deck, we tried again .... same result! The tape was STILL being folded. He phoned the 'man in charge' - no reply. Meanwhile us girls were exploring and found an old tape deck so we got that out and set it up in place of the faulty one ... the technician was a bit concerned that he couldn't get adequate sound levels but we decided to try reading the first article and check to see if you could hear it. Sadly our Talking Newspaper was barely a whisper. Realising we'd run out of options, we packed up and went home early.

(I'm on the left in the photo, wearing the silly hat)