Extended family

I mentioned a few posts back that cousin Pip had unearthed the birth certificate of Uncle Frank.  Pip and I are now both in correspondence with cousin Gill, who has sent us a couple of photographs of her father.  If there were any doubt that he were the son of both our grandparents, the later photograph dispels them.  He had marginally more hair than his father and brother, but the shape of his head, and the familial gap (which I inherit) between the top N°1 incisors, show an unmistakeable family resemblance.  Gill tells me he was fostered by a family who told him tales about his mother having died in childbirth, and his father accidentally in America.  I find the whole story rather moving.  In later years there would have been no fuss.  But in the grandparents' youth, she was presumably not allowed to marry and stay in teaching, and his teaching career would have been wrecked if his paternity had been acknowledged.  I'm no stranger to muttering ironically 'O tempora, o mores', but rarely in retrospect.

Anyway, the coincidences multiply: Gill's daughter, eerily named Frances, studied English at the same University of London college as my mother (Royal Holloway, with which the erstwhile Bedford merged).  I think the first vice-chancellor of the combined college was none other than my Med Hist Prof and Dean of Arts at St Andrews, Lionel Butler.  He of the occasional attack of gout, hence carpet slippers and a taxi into the quadrangle when he had to lecture.

The Kenwood bread machine is in disgrace, and I'm still wondering where the circlip from the kneading blade went.  Straight through, I hope, rather than to lodge in either appendix.  The new Panasonic contraption arrived today, and the instructions practically reverse my usual order of adding ingredients: yeast, flour, sugar, wets, salt.  Well, the first batch of dough (chouriço rolls) is rising as I type, and we'll see in due course whether the results are any different.  Ironically, I now find that one can buy replacement circlips for pence, and so we may finish up with a spare bread machine...

Some signs of spring out there: snowdrops are coming into flower, and perennials (notably the sedums) are putting up brave new growth.  The fuchsias I rescued from containers and hanging baskets are starting to shoot, so we ought to have cuttings in due course.  I'm conscious, of course, of the dismal failure of last year's New Guineas, so maintain a cautious outlook.  The charlottes arrived yesterday, and I've set them to chit in the garage.  Last time we grew them - in pots on the terrace - they were really delicious.  As soon as it's dry enough, we'll plant the crown of rhubarb that Margaret and John gave us at Christmas, complete with forcing bell.  Recipes for charlottes, rhubarb, fuchsias and sedum welcome...

Fresh air

We've both been suffering from a touch of cabin fever these last few days.  True, we've been out and about, but only by car on duty and shopping trips.  A wet, stormy night has dissipated all the snow except where it had been swept into heaps.  We set off for a stroll round the block late this morning, and finished up walking the couple of miles into town for lunch.  We are so lucky here: there is a good network of paved footpaths across the common, and one of them connects to one of the poshest private roads.  We do like to check on the poor folks and make sure they're surviving.  So, it seems are their builders - lots of work in progress.

One of the things I like about the village in France is that I rarely make the walk to the shops without bumping into friends or neighbours and stopping for a chat.  Not so common here, but today we bumped into four neighbours and a former colleague, and dropped into a local church for a look round, much to the delight of the chap who was in no hurry to lock it up.  It's quite a spacious church for a small village, and has quite a lot of Burne-Jones windows. 

We probably undid all the good the walk had done us by lunching in the Italian restaurant in the High Street, and I did not demur at the idea of getting the bus home.  That still leaves a 5-minute uphill walk, so one feels not wholly without virtue. 

Rites of January

We got pretty comprehensively thrashed at the Mayor's quiz last night - our team came 28th out of 40.  Our strengths (history, geography and literature) didn't figure in the list of rounds, so we were on to a loser from the start.  Frankly, my dears, I don't give a damn who the last three were in last year's X-factor.  We kept reminding ourselves that it was only a game, and enjoyed it.  It was doubtful whether the quiz would happen at all - we have approaching an inch of snow on the ground, and that, in these parts, is enough to bring everything to a standstill - but not, in this instance, the Mayor's quiz, whatever else may have ground to an icy halt.  A ploughman's lunch is served at the half-way point, and may perhaps account for a touch of the quease this morning.

As I type, the snow has started again: fine powdery stuff again, same as yesterday.  I've trudged out as far as the steps to leave new supplies of bird seed.  One good thing about the snow is that it's easier to spot the birds as they come to feed.  Yesterday we had several visits from our young male blackbird, whose beak is starting to turn to the yellow of the adult bird.  The robin is frequently around, and we also had visits from a wren and a couple of dunnocks - they always seem to go around in pairs.  There are also some families of young woodpigeons, who are now developing the white collars of the mature bird, although they're still very timid - a slight movement from the warm side of the window is generally enough to see them off.  We've run out of peanuts, so haven't seen the jay for a few days.

Seville Orange Marmalade, 2013 edition

I finished this year's marmalade-making yesterday with a third batch of the amber nectar.  It all seems to have set (eventually: the first batch had to go back for a few minutes), so all I now need to do is get it all labelled and put away.  The timing was just right: I started on the last jar of last year's output just as the Seville oranges arrived in the shops.  I passed by Waitrose's at £2/kilo, finding equally good fruit at £1.50 at the village greengrocer's.  So much for local shops being more expensive than the supermarkets, eh?

We’re getting dangerously sociable these days.  Lunch last Friday with Celia and Andy at the Globe & Rainbow (recommended).  I had the rabbit and chorizo cassoulet, since I don’t get to cook rabbit at home.  Good mixture, though I suppose the flavour of the rabbit was slightly overshadowed by that of the chouriço.  Nice bottle of house Rioja, mains and puddings (I had a nice plate of English cheeses): £20 per belly, including a decent tip.

Yesterday evening we had friends round for drinks, nibbles (blinis revisited) and a visit to the model railway.  Today we had my old boss Peter and Margaret here for lunch – chicken stellette soup, quiche lorraine with salad and baby spuds, then Martyn’s splendid apple and blackcurrant meringue pud.  As I lever the jeans on each morning, I wish I were less keen on food. But the diary for the coming weeks suggests little change of pattern.

Interesting day at the hobby on Monday, but I’m obviously no longer allowed to say what it is or what happened.  Suffice it to to say that one of my customers told me I was a prick before he was ushered down the stairs.  On the way there I go along a stretch of road that floods to kerbstone height, and just before I reached the flood, there was a car standing with the bonnet open and the hazard flashers flashing feebly.  The driver had organised help by the time I spoke to him – he’d obviously gone at it too fast, and flooded the electrics: ‘These petrol cars don’t like the water’, he lamented.  Even though I drive a diesel with plenty of ground (bzw. water) clearance, I take it at a respectful walking pace, thanks very much. But I would like to see the colour of its paint some of these days.  With two days at the hobby next week, however, I'm not about to get it washed in a hurry.  I hope our neighbourhood car washers are getting some business, but suspect a lot of people will think as I do.

The temperature has not risen as far as zero today, so putting the bins out earlier was a pretty swift process.  At least we aren't under snow.  Yet.

Resolutions be damned

Chicken breasts, trimmed.  Slash a pocket in each, and fill with barely sautéd chopped mushrooms, run round a saucepan with a little butter and two cloves of garlic, chopped finely.  Roll some bought good brand puff pastry as thinly as you can, and lay on a couple of slices of serrano (or similar) ham.  Roll up the stuffed chicken breast in the ham and pastry, seal, egg wash and do at 190° until they are golden brown.  Serve with dressed romaine leaves - one's concession to the dieting season.  And lunch was an omelette with all the leftover veggies.

Fine morning today, so I potted up some of the daffodil and tulip bulbs we were given for Christmas by Marion and John.  A bit late to plant them, I guess, but mieux vaut tard que jamais.  We have quite a lot of bulbs left over, so will spend the generous voucher that came with them on a couple of containers and a few bags of multi-purpose.  John had also done some work on my rings, he being a goldsmith.  (My knuckles, alas, have swelled in recent times.)  I had a bit of gold that he could use, so I've made use of something otherwise useless, and have my bling back.  One is the ring Martyn gave me all those years ago, and the other is my mother's wedding ring, which now fits my little finger again.

Any neighbours reading this will be glad to know that we've signed and posted a maintenance contract for the burglar alarm.  In the meantime, unless it develops a further fault, it will not be troubling them.  Bloody thing! 

We're plotting another train ride with Celia and Andy in March, this time to Worcester, where I've never been before.  King John is buried (not before time, some would say) in the cathedral, which boasts a superb Norman crypt.  (Someone I know used to say he wrote letters to the Telegraph editor as Norman Undercroft...).  I fancy a visit to the Worcester Porcelain Museum, which will be open.  Alas, the Severn Valley Railway will not, and neither will Greyfriars House and gardens.

My late, lamented aunt was posted to Worcester during the war as PA to an RAF procurement director.  She used to tell of walking breezily through Worcester with top secret files on the latest mark of Spitfire under her arm.  Her boss was no stranger to delivering severe bollockings to subordinates over the phone, and when she felt and looked vicariously intimidated, he'd give her a fat wink, showing that it was all an act.  She wasn't allowed to tell her parents where she was, or what she was doing, but her account of watching sheep grazing in the water meadows below the cathedral evidently got past the doubtless hard-pressed censor, and will have brought them some comfort.  My cousin tells me, by the way, that said aunt, her mother, was not the grandparents' third but fourth child.  The birth of a son is registered in 1906 to my grandmother, with no father's name given.  My grandparents had been 'walking out' for several years by then, and the name the child was given, Frank, is a strong hint that he was the son of Grandpa Francis, whose teaching career would have been ruined had his fatherhood been acknowledged.  How sad.  Frank will no doubt have been given for adoption, so at least will have escaped knowing us lot.

First unforeseen expense of the year

The other night I was awakened in the indecently small hours by the burglar alarm, which a momentary power cut seemed to have set off.  I was able to reset the wretched thing quickly, but probably not before it had woken the neighbourhood.  It did the same on Hogmanay when we were out, and our key-holding neighbour had to intervene.  Same again last night while we were out at the cinema.  I'm in the process of organising a repair visit, and an annual service contract.  I know how hacked off we get when other people's alarms malfunction, so don't want to alienate the neighbours still further.  One wonders how much use the damn' things are, really.  When I rang the police about a neighbour's installation a while back, they said they wouldn't act unless we'd seen someone driving off at speed, and suggested we report it to the local insanitary spectre as a noise nuisance.  I suppose the fact that we have an alarm gets us a fraction off the insurance.

We saw the New Year in as usual with friends in the Medway towns, returning home around 02:30.  New Year's Day dawned fine, so the three of us went for a little walk round the older parts of our not very old town.  There's some very fine Victorian residential architecture here and there (the work of Decimus Burton, he of the colonnade screen and triumphal arch at Hyde Park Corner), and a few handsome Georgian terraces.  Martyn had a snooze in the afternoon, and Annie and I took a little stroll round the block, then the three of us went off to the cinema.

Quartet is set in a genteel residential care home for elderly musicians, and stars Pauline Collins, Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay and Billy Connolly, all of whom, I thought, gave terrific performances, with smaller roles for Michael Gambon and Andrew Sachs.  Pauline Collins probably gave the best of them, playing the part of an elderly diva with a very erratic pattern to her dementia.  The background is the preparation for an annual gala concert by the residents to help fund the upkeep of the home, and the chorus, soloists and orchestra were retired professional musicians in real life, as emerged during the credits.  A touch on the sentimental side, but it neatly avoided the mawkish melodrama that could so easily have tempted the writers.  Directed by Dustin Hoffmann, generally (but not uniformly) very well.