Happy Fathers' Day everyone!

HAPPY FATHERS' DAY!

I know it doesn't look like much, but this is Daddy's special breakfast of scrambled eggs and mushrooms on toast, and Fathers' Day cards made by the children.

Wishing a lovely day to all the fathers out there!

Here's the all-age, all-abilities Morris at the Fringford Beer Festival

There are some things that are fantastically British.
One of them is Morris Dancing in the drizzle at a village Beer Festival!
The two younger lads here are just gorgeous. One shaking the bells next to the accordion player, and the other one in the second pair with his very new shiny bells that kept falling down his legs.

It's been half-term here. But, if one Bank Holiday means bad weather, then two Bank Holidays means truly terrible weather! Hail stones in June - it's crazy!

 One the bright side, I got to snuggle down in a cafe and have a really lovely breakfast in the warm, while watching the rain outside. With two of my favourite people!

 Yum! Yum!

So, roll on summer. Here's hoping it comes soon!

Waxing Lyrical about Elderflowers!

The Elderflowers are out and making everything smell lovely!
I'm trying to work out whether I have the time and inclination to make Elderflower Cordial.
 
GRANDMA’S HOMEMADE ELDERFLOWER CORDIAL 


Just like shop-bought cordial but if there are elderflowers growing near you, this recipe is simple. For maximum flavour, pick newly opened creamy coloured flower heads.

Makes 2 litres (3 1/2 pints)

You need:
30 elderflower heads
2 lemons, scrubbed and sliced
1 x 50g pack citric acid (from good pharmacies)
1.8kg (4lb) granulated sugar

Lemon slices, to serve
Tonic water or sparkling mineral water, to serve

Also
Muslin and 2 x 1-litre (1 3/4-pint) bottles

Method:
Turn the elderflower heads gently out on to a draining board or table top (or clean newspaper if too many heads for indoors), leave for approximately 1 hour and any tiny insects will scuttle out. Snip the main stalk from each head and let the flowers drop into a large mixing bowl. Add the lemon slices, citric acid and granulated sugar. Bring 1.5 litres (2 1/2 pints) of cold water to the boil and pour over the mixture. Stir to dissolve the sugar, then cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave the mixture for 5 days, stirring it once a day. 
After this time, line a colander with a double thickness of muslin and set over a bowl. Scald the muslin by pouring over boiling water, and then discard the water. Turn the elderflower brew into the muslin-lined colander and let the cordial strain through. Discard everything left behind in the colander. Use a jug to scoop the cordial from the bowl and pour into bottles. 
To serve, pour 2-3 tablespoons of cordial into a tumbler. Add ice and a slice of lemon and fill up with water, tonic water or sparkling mineral water. 
The cordial will keep, refrigerated, for up to 3 months. If you want it to last for up to 1 year, introduce a campden tablet (a preservative used by home wine makers and available from pharmacies). Crush 1 tablet to a powder and mix with 1 tablespoon of cold water to dissolve. Add to the cordial after straining.






On the other hand, I might just make Elderflower Cupcakes:

Elderflower cupcakes

Preparation time:

30 minutes

Cooking time:

20 minutes

Total time:

50 minutes

Makes:

 12

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter, softened
175g caster sugar
3 eggs
5 tbsp elderflower cordial
175g self-raising flour pearl swirl white icing flowers, for decorating (optional)

Icing

110g unsalted butter,softened
120g icing sugar
3 tbsp elderflower cordial
50g cream cheese

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180° gas mark 4; line a 12-hole muffin tin with paper cases. Using electric beaters, cream together the butter and sugar in a bowl for 5 - 6 minutes until pale and fluffy.
2. In a jug, gently whisk together the eggs and cordial. Add a spoonful of flour to the creamed butter then slowly pour in the egg mixture, beating constantly. Sift the remaining flour and a pinch of salt into the mixture and fold in until evenly combined.
3. Place heaped tablespoons of the batter into the cases and bake for 18 - 20 minutes until the cakes are golden and spring back when touched. Cool on a wire rack.

4. For the icing, cream the butter, icing sugar and cordial together for 3 - 4 minutes until light and fluffy. Beat in the cream cheese until you have a thick, creamy icing. Spread or pipe over the cupcakes and decorate with icing flowers, if liked.

 Incidentally, there's also a Diamond Jubilee on (just in case you hadn't noticed!).

No, the pictures don't have anything to do with the text - I don't have any pictures of Elderflowers! :-)

Tabby-Kat and the iphone

There's been a LOT of rain here recently.
Our path to school is looking a like this:

Tabby has worked out how to take pictures of herself on my i-phone.
Some of these are very sweet photos.

Some are less so!

We're working on giving up Tabby's midday naps.
Sometimes we make it through until the evening.
But often there's a suspicious silence........

  .....followed by snoring!

Rugby in the rain!

 It's cold and wet here. But we went to rugby practice anyway!

And then to Starbucks for a warming Hot Chocolate afterwards.

Christopher Poole 31/12/1974 - 10/04/2012

This is Chris. We met when I was 15 and he was 16, and there was electricity between us from day one.

He lived in Kenya, and I split my time between holidays at home in Kenya and boarding school, and later university, in England.

He was a big guy in every respect – more than twice the size of me, (when we first knew each other he could span my waist with his hands). Big personality. Big heart. Big ideas. And when he messed up, he screwed up big-time.

He didn’t do what a lot of the boys I knew did, which was to get their first jobs in their parents business. He hustled, and panhandled, and took lousy jobs sometimes in insalubrious places. I remember visiting him when he worked on a sisal plantation in the Taita Hills. Just sisal, as far as you could see, in every direction. I don’t think I ever knew a time when he had enough money!

I loved him, and he loved me; but like a bad film, the timing was always wrong. I would bump into him in town, two days before I was due to fly out of the country. Or, he’d come up to me in a bar and explain that he was leaving to go back to the coast/Sudan/Uganda the next day. Similarly, if I was in a relationship, he was single; but when I was free, he was always taken.

In his early twenties he and my father set up a business together. I remember him the night before his first training session, shaking with nerves. This huge man, reduced to a little quivering puppy. I never saw anything so truly pathetic in my life! My heart just broke for him. Of course, it went fine and everything was great. So within two weeks he was full of himself, cocky and arrogant, and telling everyone else how to do their job, until I could have hit him! I didn’t though. What would have been the point? He was bulletproof.

He was no angel. He drank, he smoked, he swore. He did everything to excess.

He was a real rough diamond. He was a physical man through and through. I asked him once what his favourite smell was, “Gun oil” he replied, “No, wait! (grin) Female arousal and gun oil!”

He hunted. He fished. He always told me he couldn’t live anywhere but Kenya (“this land’s in my blood, babes. I couldn’t survive anywhere else”).

We wrote to each other. We phoned. We emailed. We had separate lives that would occasionally blend together in a crazy whirlwind for a few days, then carry on like parallel lines.

He made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe. He could pick me up and throw me round the room like a toy. He annoyed me and perplexed me in equal measure. In the warm, hazy nights to the sounds of ceiling fans and cicadas we shared moments of such intimacy and excitement, and such raw and penetrating emotion, that it still hurts to think about it all these years later. And he could do romantic like no-one else. I remember dancing in his arms on the deck of the Tamarind Dhow, as he sang in my ear.

I haven’t seen Chris for the last 13 years. About 11/12 years ago he was in the UK and we thought about meeting up, but his girlfriend at the time expressly forbade it. So, it’s been on-line communication for the last few years.

We were messaging on facebook yesterday morning. Joking, laughing, flirting and messing around like old times. And then, yesterday evening the messages started to pop up on facebook that he had had a fatal heart attack that afternoon.

It’s somehow unbelievable, and yet too real. He was my Meatloaf. My Indiana Jones. My Michael Madsen. I feel his loss so sharply. He was (with the exception of my husband) the great love of my life. Maybe, it’s because we never had enough time to truly explore our relationship that our friendship has lasted so long. Who knows?

I’m left with a deep grief, which I feel I’m probably not entitled to. Chris was a charmer. Maybe there are other women out there feeling the same way I do. Maybe, not. Maybe we did have something special.

Rest in Peace, Chris. May your memory be eternal. For someone with so little interest in religion (“Spirits come in bottles, babe!”), you have a lot of people praying for you and your family right now.

I will miss you.

A biking story!

Once upon a time, not so long ago; for absolutely no reason, (that I could fathom, anyway) Daddy came home early and took the children to the shop and bought them new bikes.
Which made them very happy.

And then they rode them all the way home!
The End!