Rites of January

Pleasant ride along to Edenbridge on Friday.  At Thursday's art class Miss said that she needed more paintings to pack out our little exhibition at Bridges.  There was a tall thin space alongside my Madeira and Seven Sisters seascapes, so I smacked some D-rings on my Madeira triptych and wheeled it along.  We were treated to fine views of the frosty countryside, and as usual we made a circular route of it: out via Ashurst and Hever, home via Four Elms, Bough Beech and Penshurst.  Eye-wateringly cold, however, as it has been for quite a few days now.  Still, the sunshine is very good for the spirits.

Although I've had the car for three months now, I'm still learning its little ways.  The transmission behaves like the freewheel on certain old Rovers and Saabs when you select the 'Eco' mode.  When you lift off the throttle, the revs drop to about 800 and it coasts, ticking over, I believe, on two cylinders.  As soon as you touch a pedal again, the motor reengages, making it safer than a freewheel proper.  The motor cuts out when you come to a halt, which is usually OK, but is not welcome when one's waiting to turn right across the traffic.  Consequently, one needs to think ahead and start up in good time to avoid a rather jerky take-off.  The car is much better at parking itself than its predecessor, and adds perpendicular parking to its bag of tricks.  I'm starting to see slightly better fuel consumption figures as I learn and the motor loosens.  But I am pretty much resigned to never getting the hang of the 'infotainment' kit, and I cannot master the choreography to get it to open or close the tailgate when I have my hands full of shopping!

Last night was the Mayor's annual charity quiz.  Very well attended as usual, with 47 teams of 8 competing.  Martyn did well at the pictures round, and we weren't too bad at our joker, Science and Nature.  It helped that I'd spent a while during the afternoon looking at science quizzes on the internet, thus discovering the source of many of the questions....  The final round was set by the the self-styled 'Mayor Dave', and was about the man himself, his career in local politics etc.  This gave a huge advantage to his cronies, which was inappropriate.  The supper included in the ticket price was really rather poor - industrial mini scotch eggs, pork pies and suchlike.  These jaundiced remarks are of course in no way influenced by our finishing close the the bottom of the field.  Still, the Assembly Hall's Sauvignon Blanc was immeasurably better than Cunard's, and healthily under half the price!

Fortunately, the snow came and went fairly quickly, but a partial thaw followed by hard frost made for very tricky driving - we suspect - and for noisy early mornings as hardy commuters crunched past on the frozen slush.  The garden is pretty much frosted in, with ice on the pond for the past week or so.  There is a little bit of colour from some primulas and of course from the bright red bark of the cornus, and the buds are fattening on the magnolia and rhododendrons.  The woodpeckers have started drumming nearby, and the robins are haranguing each other.  So I guess spring isn't too far off.

Tania Foley RIP

Tania, as Jane Birch in Kate Glover's Fire & Phoenix

Though Tania Foley and I met but once, we had swapped messages on facebook about stuff for the Historia website.  In addition to her likeability as a correspondent, she was also an accomplished actor, and we greatly enjoyed her performances in a number of rôles in Fire & Phoenix at All Hallows by the Tower. 

That she should have died in her thirties of complications of pneumonia and blood clots in her lungs seems such a waste, particularly in the light of her having been shooed away from hospital, told that she'd pulled a muscle in her chest. A prolific facebook poster (I admit I had stopped following her onslaught of posts!), she was posting optimistic, sparky messages to the last.

She is a great loss to the performing arts, and to us all.

Marmalade time

Phew: it set!

I'm never too good at guessing when the Seville oranges will arrive.  Fifteen years ago, I had it all made (though with a last-minute panic reboil to get the last batch to setting point!) before I left to spend Christmas in Australia.  Not sure when I did it last year, but I nearly missed the boat this time.  Par conséquent, I spent longer than is comfortable this morning in supermarkets, ultimately finding supplies in the place run by a firm that used to pride itself in never knowingly being undersold.  Well, I suppose that's technically true today, since no other bugger had any.  Oh, well: toffs is careless.  But I did make yet another supermarket visit to get the sugar more cheaply from Fortnums.  Mistake: the queue at the till took best part of a quarter of an hour.

The arthritic hands being as they are, I use a food processor to slice the fruit - once through the medium disk and once through the fine.  It was therefore not a comfort to have the magimix bowl give up the ghost when I was preparing a leek and spud blanquette last week.  Well, the replacement bowl arrived this morning while I was scouring the Home Counties for Seville oranges, so I'm all set for an early start tomorrow.  Except for the small matter of getting the preserving pan down from the garage loft.

Our other entertainment at the moment is interviewing tarmac fettlers.  Our driveway shows all the signs of having been made in a hurry by Wimpey 36 years ago, with quite a bit of settlement and cracking.  A drain top now stands proud, and we're afraid that visitors will trip on it.  The first punter came in with an eye-watering estimate for what sounds like a thorough job.  Yesterday's proposed a quick and dirty approach, and we await his estimate.  Thoroughly confused, we've sent for two more, and hope to have decided by this time next week.  Ah, the joys of home ownership.

Here comes another one

The early hours of New Year's Day were mercifully fog free and mild for our return after an enjoyable evening with the Gillingham tendency.  But I didn't hang around outdoors to watch the fireworks, since the wind was a bit sharp.  We were just about washed and dressed by midday, and proceeded to have a thoroughly idle day, if only so as to set the pattern for the year to come! 

Next day we'd to collect Annie from Heathrow on her return from a short stay in Madrid with her brother and sister-in-law.  Once again, the M25 was relatively user-friendly, as on our drive to Southampton.  Definitely a road to be used at weekends or public holidays.  Annie [with help from a Christmas present voucher from Marion and John] took us to lunch next day in Tenterden.  A pleasant drive in fine weather, and a decent snack lunch at the good old Café Rouge.  I'd never had a croque-champignons before, and shall be replicating the same next time I have some béchamel left over! 

The cards are down and boxed for recycling, the Christmas tree and decorations are bagged up and put away, and we're hunkering down for the worst months of the year.  There has been hard frost and freezing fog, but we haven't had to venture out on the worst days, though it was very frosty when I got home on Thursday after a long day at the hobby.  Yesterday's dreich weather had one small compensation: there were fewer than usual people at Fortnums' when we went to stock up on essentials.  But many of those who were out and about had no idea how to use their lights in fog.  Many had no lights on at all.  Others kept their rear fog lamps on even when the fog had cleared, though I guess this is less of a problem now that most cars have high-level brake lights.  [I switched on the rear fog lights yesterday when the fog thickened at one point, only to be instructed by the car to switch them off again!  I elected to use my judgement...]

Today has been mild, so I have done a modicum of gardening.  The roses that we look out on from the dining room had been looking very straggly, so have had an interim prune.  There were already sporting new buds, but from weak shoots.  The Bramley has had an overdue prune: a bough that had been overhanging the garden is now heading for the municipal compost heap, as is a smaller branch that had been rubbing on the fence.  I gave up at that point, since I had slipped a few times on the lichen that afflicts cold surfaces at this time of year.  Bit of a pain, this getting old stuff.