What are you doing on this Friday afternoon?

I'm multi-tasking; cleaning my living/dining room, watching Kirsty's Homemade Christmas, talking to you on the 'puter and getting on with my blanket.

Comfort food.

I poured my lunch out yesterday and carried it in to the living room, put it on the chest and went off to get something. The irony/suitability of where I'd put it didn't occur to me until later. See the magazine?

Broccoli and stilton soup. The broccoli had been gradually browning at the back of my fridge, the stilton was left over from Christmas. I softened an onion, a stick of celery finely chopped and the broccoli, diced for want of a better description, and then added two potatoes peeled and chopped. A litre of water from the kettle and a good simmer later, my soup was done. I put in some stilton, seasoned to taste and whizzed it to a pulp in my mixer.

It is heavenly. Real comfort food, as the snow fell slowly past the window.

I also couldn't resist the next magazine front. Is 2010 your happy year? What are you doing to be happy?

Here we go again....

A new blanket for the living room.



It's a yellow and red room, and so warm in winter.

I love snuggling under a blanket and watching or sewing or reading, or just being.


But I also like having a toasty blanket behind my back as insulation. So far the room has 3 blankets and a quilt. Time for another one. A granny square blanket. My third.

I love the colours in this blanket, cream, yellow (the colour of good egg yolks; I feel the need for the first and last time to knit an egg. I'll sit still 'til it passes) a deep orange colour that defies a name and two shades of red, barely visible difference but important since I have two balls of one and 9 balls of the other.


I'm going to do a square of 9 granny squares together and then a treble border all around until such time as the red runs out. A double edge of yellow and snuggle under with a coffee. Bliss.

I can't help it, everytime he says it I cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?


And everytime I cry, my kids go "Oh for heaven's sake!"
Don't they know I'm a human being?
Sadly missed already, Doctor. *sigh*

Alone again, naturally

They are all back in school! A house to myself.... several precious and shining hours alone to pass with no one to talk to, no plans, no ultimate goal.
I love the occasional space to fritter and I have frittered many days away. I had every intention of frittering this one,but......
I found I felt lonely. Once they had all gone and I was washed, dressed, sitting on the settee and thinking, "What shall I do?" I find I miss them. They are not the constant millstone they used to be (who doesn't get the 24/7 nature of babies and toddlers; lovely suffocation) but independant and fun personalities. They're a background noise that I love.
There was no cure but to go out. So, reader, I set off with my notepad puter and got it fixed (after about a month incommunicado) which meant I spent a happy hour talking to the guy in Curry's. Back home, to watch Wallander in the original and to blog, perchance to dream. I have also done a load of washing, tidied the hall and made a filling for a mined beef pie.
I can always fritter tomorrow.

We sit and watch, we sit and wait...

Will enough snow fall to make school late?



I'll leave you to guess whose fervent wishes are for more snow and who (which mother) is ambivalent to another couple of days with three in a room and too much to do to DO anything sensible; perhaps I should teach the boys to knit, or make cakes to decorate, but I can't get them off the TV, the computer, the Wii.......



Oh blow it. I'll go for the more snow option. It's time the lads learnt to sew.

This will be an iconic image in years to come.

When I saw this on the news last night, it made me go Wow! Who would ever believe that Britain could look like this? And still the big freeze goes on.

My boiler stopped working this morning. British Gas (with whom I have a service agreement) won't send anyone out until Sunday. They won't guarantee Sunday. It is 'busy'. I know they're busy; lots of people have problems in the winter, that's what we pay for. I got very Margot on the phone to them, but it was still only Sunday that was available.

Then I did what I should have done in the first place. I spoke to my Dad. And he said, "Check your water pipe leading out of the boiler and pour a kettle of water over it. Your brother's did exactly the same yesterday." So I did, and guess what? It's fixed! So no gasman on Sunday. Yippee! Apparently it's quite common on condenser boilers, especially Worcesters. If you have problems with the boiler turning off, check it, too. Any thing to save three days of freezing and a workman going 'tsk' and shaking his head. Off for a cuppa now in front of a toasty warm radiator. Have a good day!

Post script;

What I should have added is that I told British Gas I would contact an independent fitter and bill them; only to be told by the young man at the other end that they wouldn't pay, that my chances of getting someone were slim to none existent and that they would charge me horrendous odds.

Not so. Barry the Gasman's wife took my details and said he would ring me back and possibly visit me 'today' (that is, the day the boiler broke) and he would ring me... which he did. He was pleased that I'd cured the fault myself, told me he would have given me that advice over the phone himself, didn't know why BritGas didn't, and that he could have come by that afternoon rather than have me freeze. Barry also said he's always at the end of a phone for me. I can feel a stand coming on; the end of paying for a useless service agreement and a relationship with a small, independent gasfitter. Is this another example of the small being beautiful?