My shoes

My shoes won a prize this week!

I have had a pair of Cotton Traders suede slip-on shoes for a number of years and just happened to notice that they were offering a prize for one of their items "which had stood the test of time" so, on impulse, I snapped my old shoes and sent them the photo.

I was quite surprised to learn that my shoes had won and today I received a leather holdall and some "travel accessories" (a luggage weighing thingie, a suitcase locking thingie and one of those neck shaped blow up cushion thingies).

What a shame that I hardly ever travel anywhere, but I doubt Cotton Traders knew that. 

Nut loaf

I made a nut loaf on Monday but because of a power cut that evening, I couldn't cook it until last night. Having eaten some of it for supper, my original view has been reinforced - nut loaf is rubbish!  How can that be, when the individual ingredients are all so good?

My loaf contained nuts (cashew), red lentils, red pepper, onion, leek, mushrooms, spelt breadcrumbs, egg and the appropriate seasoning - all good ingredients but when mixed together ended up being totally tasteless and bland!

The only redeeming feature was the tomato sauce!

Anyone got a good nut loaf recipe, as I do like the idea of it?

Shocked!

I heard some shocking news yesterday!  Our village Post Office/store is closing in early April!

The owners are retiring, although I find it hard to believe they are retirement age - they assure me they are over that age but .... hmmm, they don't look it.  They intend to incorporate the business portion of the bungalow into their own home, which is quite small at the moment and I would image will be pleased that people will no longer drive all over their front garden in their attempts to park as close as possible to the shop door!  I wish them all the best.

However, this is going to cause a complete change of life style for numerous people in the village, me included.  The daily visit to the shop for a newspaper will be gone, so I will have to find something else to get me out of the house for a walk every day - if I run out of anything, or have an impulse to bake a cake, there will no longer be a shop just round the corner to buy the butter, cream, jam, flour, cheese etc.  

The wonderful spelt bread which they collected from the bakery every weekend, and kept two loaves for me in their freezer if I was away, will be gone.  There will no longer be the possibility of a sneaky bottle of wine last thing before they close when I find we've run out and all our parcels will have to be taken a mile and a half down the road to the nearest Post Office.

There are a large number of very elderly people in the village (apart from me lol!) and quite a few disabled ones as well who have counted on the shop as a lifeline and quite probably people who only bought in this village because it had a shop.

During the snowy weather (still some more to come I understand) the shop was a lifeline and virtually sold out of everything.  Queues were coming out the door some days!

It is a sad moment for the village and will certainly affect a lot of people's lives.

On the positive side, there are some nice walks nearby, we live five minutes from a main bus route (buses in either direction every half hour) and perhaps I will subscribe to an on-line newspaper (save the trees!). 

What I, and I suspect everyone else, will miss is the camaraderie of the shop, chatting with the owners, meeting people - both those we know and new acquaintances and the feeling that the heart will be gone from the village.  

Maybe it's time to move .....

Christmas card audit

Cribbing an idea from Tim http://timbobig.blogspot.co.uk/ when I picked up the bag containing 2012 Christmas cards to dispose of them (recycling) I decided to do a quick audit of the subjects.  Here is the result:

  

RELIGIOUS  -  3

SCENERY  -  10

ASSORTED ANIMALS  -  6

FATHER CHRISTMAS  -  4

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS  -  4

TEDDY BEARS  -  2

SNOWMEN  -  1

BOATS  -  2

CHRISTMAS TREES  -  6

ROBINS  -  4

WORDS (e.g. “SNOW”)  -  1

I can't compare with last year as I didn't categorise them but please have another look next year to compare results (if I remember to do the audit).

 

I learned one thing at school .....

and that was how to line a cake tin!  We must have had a very good cookery teacher in my school days as so much of the stuff I remember dates back to school cookery lessons.  My mother wasn't a 'natural' cook and therefore found it hard to pass on any skills; some do remain however, mainly how to scrape out the mixing bowl when the cake was in the oven!  This, of course, isn't allowed these days because of the raw egg content!

My skills in lining a cake tin returned to me today as I decided for the first time in many years to make a Christmas cake. The last few Christmas's have been with family who don't like Christmas cake so there was no real incentive to bake and previously R's mother had always made the cakes.

There were no instructions in Delia's recipe on how to line the tin, although I'm sure her skills with this are even greater than mine, but from the back of my mind I dragged the ancient instructions on how to do this.  Line the base first - cut the paper with an overhang which could be turned up, then measure round the tin to get the length which then had to have a 'turn up' which had to be cut at intervals to make it bend!

Grease absolutely everything with butter and fit the paper.  Hey presto, it worked.

The base corners shouldn't be inspected too closely but, what the hell, no-one's going to stop a galloping horse to look at them (as my grandmother used to say).

Very pleased with my efforts and went on to read the Method of the recipe, realising that I needed at least four large mixing bowls.  As I only have two and one of those was full of stew (another story) I had a stop for a coffee and a think. It was possibly the caffeine rush but I suddenly remembered that somewhere in the depths of a cupboard I had my late mother-in-law's Kenwood Mixer! She had bought this in the late 1950's when they were new to the market (my mother had one as well) and had the same impact as today's technology!  Baking was revolutionised!  No longer did you have to stand with a wooden spoon beating sugar and butter until it was white or tediously whisking eggs with a hand beater - this mixer was all electric, had so many attachments it was a phenomenon, and, in my view, has never been bettered. With a little forward planning the problem was over!

So I end with thanks to Mrs Stallibrass (my cookery teacher) and Gwen (my lovely m-i-l) for giving me the knowledge and technology to bake a Christmas cake.
 

Hickling/Horsey sailing

Another wonderful weekend but this time something rather different for me.  A friend invited me to sail with her (and another crew member) up to Hickling Broad and then on to Horsey Mere in her classic Broads river cruiser, meeting up for lunch with about half a dozen other boats from the same sailing club.

Having only sailed on river cruiser on a couple of occasions I was a little uncertain but decided that it was too good an offer to pass on so packed my bag with life jacket, sailing gloves, wine and cake and headed for Thurne.

We duly met up and I was quickly bundled on to another boat to cross from one side of the river to the moorings on the other side, handed the tiller and told to guide the boat down the dyke.  Gulp!!   Luckily there were no sails up at this stage and once I’d remembered that the tiller should be turned the opposite way to which you wanted to travel, I was ok.  I did hand it back when we got to the busy main river and the mooring.

We seemed to have a huge amount of gear for three of us, although the other ladies were staying overnight on the boat, so this was understandable. This was all stowed away in the cabin, the boat was uncovered, the outboard engine was lifted on to its bracket, the sails were set up ready, the boat was turned round and we were all set to head upriver to tackle Potter Heigham bridge.

The original plan was to sail up the river to this bridge and moor up to lower the mast but as we had been a little late setting off it was decided we would lower the mast first and motor to the other side of the two road bridges.

As we approached the bridge it became obvious that there was a sailing race starting and we had to carefully negotiate through the start, our skipper greeting most of the other sailors as we weaved our way through. 

She wasn’t sure of our air draft so I stood up to judge the height and we cleared the bridge with about 12 inches to spare.  We discovered later that some boats had centimetres clearance! 

Having moored up to raise the mast we set the sails and off we went up the river, luckily no tacking involved at this stage so we could look at the riverside properties and boats as we progressed in the glorious sunshine.

After a while, we turned left into Candle Dyke and after a fairly short sail we arrived at Hickling Broad, which is a National Nature Reserve.  There was a regatta of small boats going on and we spied our raft up on the other side of the Broad.  As we approached, under sail, there were shouts to me of “where’s your camera Sue” and I just managed to snatch one shot as we tacked and turned to come neatly alongside the end of the raft up.

  

 Greetings were shouted along the boats, lunch was produced, wine was opened with a pop from the fizzy stuff I had brought and everything was perfect.   It was so peaceful and we watched the dinghy racing on the Broad - what a wonderful way to spend an afternoon.

As time went by, one or two of the boats started peeling off to sail on up Meadow Dyke to Horsey Mere and the dyke where we would be mooring before heading to the Nelson Head pub for an evening meal.  We were almost the last boat to leave and were overtaken by another faster boat as we made our way up the beautiful winding dyke on to Horsey Mere.  A quick sail across this lovely stretch of water and we were into our mooring.

By the time everything was tidied up and bunks were prepared for the two staying overnight, it was time to head to the pub.  There were 32 of us and we took over the restaurant for the evening, amidst a lot of laughing and joking.

R had joined me for the evening and we then drove home for the night, rejoining the fleet early the next morning.  The thick fog which was surrounding us as we drove cleared as we reached Horsey and the coast and another day of lovely sunshine dawned.

It had been a cold night and many of the brave people who had stayed on their boats were returning from hot showers in the toilet block or tucking into hearty breakfasts.

R was to sail back downriver on another boat, which he was delighted with as he had admired this particular cruiser for years.  He told me later that he had been allowed to helm most of the way!  Very impressed!

We set off on to Horsey Mere and decided to have a bit of practice manoeuvring the boat.  The other crew member (who had only been sailing for 4 months but was a natural sailor) wanted to learn how to sail backwards, so we spent some time trying out the theory, unfortunately failing!  There were a number of suggestions made, some quite bizarre, but we gave up in the end and headed for home.

Halfway there, the wind died completely so the decision was made to use the engine and lower the mast whilst travelling.  I was again put in charge of steering and only made one or two mistakes!!

We cleared Potter Heigham bridge with about 10 inches to spare this time and again I steered whilst the mast was raised.  We rafted up for lunch on Womack Water which wasn’t quite as peaceful as the previous day as someone was strimming on the bank!  Uh, what was that all about?

Boats again started to move off for the journeys back to their home moorings and we reluctantly set off, passing the Hunter Yard boats ready for lifting out of the water for the winter.

We moored up by Thurne Mill to offload the bags and then the skipper and other crew member took her back to her moorings.  Goodbyes and thanks were exchanged and we went on our way home.

What a fabulous weekend and I had such a good time, in the best company and super weather.  I am so lucky!

No telephone banking

I can remember the days when you could telephone your bank and the phone was answered by someone who actually worked at the branch and knew the names of all the staff and could put you through to the person you wanted to speak to, or take a sensible message for them.

I recently had to cancel an appointment with someone at my bank and, naively perhaps, assumed that the telephone number on his business card was his direct telephone line.  Wrong!

On ringing the number, I had to go through a tedious procedure of tapping in various branch, account and birth date numbers.  The latter was easy but the former meant I had to search around in my file whilst the automated voice on the line seemed to become more impatient with me.  I eventually got these stages out of the way, only to be asked for the third digit of my telephone banking pin!  I don't do telephone banking!

After asking me three times, the automated voice suggested that I should hold on whilst I was connected to one of the bank's staff and the music started.  After what seemed like 10 minutes of music a real person came on and was actually someone I could understand.

However, he didn't seem to be able to grasp the fact that I needed to get a message to a particular person to cancel an appointment.  I tried to speak precisely, with nothing but the facts but he was making assumptions and I wasn't entirely confident that the message would get through.

Perhaps I should have just not turned up for the appointment as the quickest way of getting the message across!  I suppose one compensation is that I don't appear to have been charged for the call.