sneaking off


swan lake
Originally uploaded by ramtops

Despite having far too much work to do, we looked out the window this morning, and said “fukkit”, and took ourselves off to Slimbridge, as the Bewick swans are coming in.

We started in the café, with a slice each of a rather fine carrot cake, and a dish of tea, then ambled round in the autumn sunshine taking a lot of not all that good photos, but having a nice relaxing time nonetheless.

Home via the horror that is Makro, and we are now stocked up with 96 tines of catfud, which will probably last until Thursday, the rate they’re scoffing.

I should really do some work now, but I think I’ll just have the rest of the day off.

More photos here.

don't have a cow, man

Yesterday morning, we went to the library to look at the “exhibition” of possible development of new housing round our village. It’s a matter of “how”, rather than “if”, but there’s going to be very little that Long Ashton can do in terms of influence, I fear. I took the opportunity to actually *join* the library – I’ve only lived in the village for 9 years, and I don’t like to rush things. And then, of course, I borrowed some books, which was probably foolish given the size of my to-read heap.

After that, we trundled up to Telford, to collect half a cow from the inestimable Steve Rawlings. This is rather less meat than it sounds, as Dexters are small beasts anyway, and this was a small beast in Dexter terms too. On the way home, we stopped at a farm shop somewhere in Shropshire for some fruit and veg, and then at Ludlow Food Centre, which was very impressive, and not as expensive as it looked.

We bought a variety of sossidge (as we generally do when we spot new ones), a small shoulder of pork for perlmonger‘s birthday tea (a rather excellent looking pork goulash seen on The Boy Oliver’s prog the other day), a red cabbage to accompany it, and an astonishingly looking elderflower and lime cheesecake, just because we could, really.

Today we have to do the “up to the elbows in gore” thing and get this cow bagged up for the freezer. We also have to deliver some Parish Plan questionnaires for data entry to two different households, go on the village walk this afternoon, and cook this goulash, which I have just discovered requires three hours in the oven after a load of prepping. And there’s the red cabbage to do.

I’d better get on, I guess. Still, there is a bottle of Pelorus to look forward to after all our labours 🙂

home again

We have returned from a visit to the frozen East, to visit his Harryness. Well actually, it wasn’t frozen – the weather was gorgeous, and we hied ourselves up to Sheringham yesterday, to eat fish and chips, and ice cream, and buy crab meat for supper. Lovely day, and Harry saw the sea for the very first time!

He is growing apace, and a lovely sunny baby. We miss him lots, and wish he and his mum were closer, but ho hum. Perhaps we’ll win the lottery and move back to Norfolk.

Days start early in that household, so both nights we all crawled off to bed at about 21:30, and slept like things that slept, in a sleeping sort of way.

In other news, we have booked tickets to see The Blue Nile in Dublin. I haven’t been to Dub for about 40 years (and perlmonger has never been), despite visiting about 3-4 times a year before that, as my mother was born there, and my grandmother lived in Belgrave Road, Monkstown. Really looking forward to it, but seething at the Ryanair site, whose headline prices were £3.99 out and £0.99 back (!), but still ended up as over 85 quid when I got to the checkout. Still, it’ll be lovely to go back, and TBN is a grand excuse!

the weekend stops here

Here in Long Ashton, the first weekend of September is chock full of things to do; two days of Harbourside Food Festival in Bristol, two days of International Kite Festival at Ashton Court just up the road, and various village activities – village walk, Flower Show, pub quiz.

We planned to do all of them, and in the end did none, as perlmonger and I have been struck by some vile lurgy which has left us exhausted and listless for several days.

On Saturday we struggled over to the Retail Hell that is St Phillips to pick up something for kalunina (and they didn’t have one – GNASH). and yesterday morning P drove up to the farm shop to fetch a chickie! to have something simple to cook and eat for dinner. Other than that,we haven’t set foot out of the house for days, nor done any proper work.

And that must change, as we are up to here with work, and must start back today with a vengeance. Luckily I feel a little better this morning …

well, that was the weekend then

During which we watched the Corpse Bride (on DVD) (fabulous), Harry Potter 5 (in the cinema) (better than expected), made a batch of bolognese sauce for the freezer, went to the tip with the plastic bottles, bought some plants for the front garden, did my first cooking with ricotta (a spinach and ricotta lasagne, and a truly fabulous strawberry cheesecake).

We also came second in the pub quiz (don’t knock it, the team who come first have to buy the raffle prizes), had brunch in North Street and worked out how to sort out our photographers system.

And now it’s Monday, we are fairly quiet on work for a few days, and perlmonger is about to build himself a new box. Which means his temper will be fraying almost immediately …

weekend 14/15 july 07

Saturday dawned, and we felt rather lethargic … took ourselves over to North Street for brunch at Ceiturica, and did health food shops and greengrocers. Sadly butcher was closed, so no bacon or black pudding 🙁 Trawled the many charidee shops for HarryStuff but nothing forthcoming (unlike Dursley last Thursday!).

lunch was roasted seabass for perlmonger and skewered lamb and chicken for me – both delicious, as always. Then into Aldl (or is it Lidi?) for some waffer thin meat for the tribe and some fizzing water.

popped home with the shopping, then got back in the car and drove to Chippenham, where the always lovely purple-peril was hosting her annual bash. Very nice time indeed (thanks hon!), but we crawled away at 8, after drinking ourselves silly on water, as we were just Too Tired.

Sunday morning brought a visit from Heather, who provoked some rather startling behaviour from Lilith; she handed over the relevant files, and I am now Official Secretary to the village Footpath User Group …

We got going relatively early for that, and perlmonger gave the living room a rather overdue vacuum, while I baked some blueberry muffins to offer Heather. When she’d left, we sat and watched Jeckyll, which is glorious hokum, then returned to working on the rebuilding of Nibblous, which has been eating our spare time this last week or two. Dinner was pan fried duck (why do they call it that?), with fennel and carrots braised in chicken stock, potatoes roasted in olive oil, and braised shallots in red wine.

and, just in case anyone cares, www.nibblous.com is now finished and up – we think it is much improved.

working weekend

we spent most of the weekend working, as previously detailed. I don’t think we’ve had a full day off for about four weeks, and it’s starting to show … making silly mistakes with server config files and flailing formed a large part of yesterday afternoon 🙁

which meant that the Complicated Cooking I’d planned fell into abeyance – it will have to be Duck with Lentils and Ceps tonight. Anyway, we scoffed a full english for brunch, and all we could manage at the end of a long afternoon was a bag of Kettle chips and some chocolate raisins. Very healthy. I was thwarted in my probably foolish desire for a last half glass of wine by finding that the bottle I’d put in the fridge was in fact *red*, due to perlmonger‘s inability to put the white wine in the left side of the wine rack. Probably just as well.

caught up with Dr Who (huge fun) and the second episode of Jekyll, which I am enjoying enormously. Best line, most definitely: “I’ve got my pride” – I’m still chortling.

in other news, Liessa is not mending as well as we’d hoped, and is now on 5mg of steroids a day. And not enjoying it, and neither are we. The first pill went down reasonably easily, as we had surprise on our side; yesterday, not so good. We got it down her, but we are scratched quite badly, and she is extremely suspicious. Not quite sure how to deal with this … kevlar, possibly.

early start this morning

as we took Liessa to the vets for a full dental examination and lord knows what else. Details at the CatBlog if anyone wants more.

the weekend was spent mostly working – Pete got some nassty Ajax stuff nailed in the horror that is IE6, and I did the globes presentation and back office pages, and the currency switcher (hurrah!) for the maps site. We cooked a vat of chicken tagine on Saturday evening, which was vair nice, and there were three tubs left for the freezer.

today will be mostly spent worrying about the little kitteh, of whom we are inordinately fond. And wrestling with Worldpay’s callback system. Let nobody say we don’t lead a full and exciting life.