Baking Subscription September

This was nutty millionaires shortbread and it was nice. It was nutty times two really as there was ground almond in the biscuit base and chopped pecans in the toffee. While I liked the ground almond in the base I wasn't too fussed about the pecans, and I'd rather have had milk chocolate on the top than plain. That  said the base was lovely and crisp and I'd use the recipe again, but leave out the pecans, put less salt in the biscuit and use milk chocolate on the top. Still, it was definitely a hit. 

100 Books to Read Poster No 18

 

Dissolution by C J Sansom. I've read this before, more or less when it first came out, and I must have enjoyed it because I went on to read the next four or five in the series before I got fed up with how formulaic the books were and stopped. From friends who carried on reading them I gather there was recently a very bad one that read as though it had been phoned in, followed by a return to form. I have to say that after re-reading, or rather listening to this, I feel no urge to get up to date with the series again. 

Apart from being very long it's also very bleak. I a understand that the time period and the subject matter sort of make those a given; there wasn't much to laugh about in Henry V111's England, especially if you were a monk.  It was overall a very very sad book and the ending in particular was heart breaking. Not the loss of the two young characters who get lost in the marsh, good riddance to them both as far as I was concerned; but the melancholy scenes in the Epilogue where the narrator re-visits the monastery where he carried out the murder investigation which is the subject of the book,  and details the destruction of first the community and then the fabric of the place. I hold no particular brief for the monastic life, but the greed of those who used religious reform as a way of enriching themselves at the expense of anyone weaker, or less morally flexible,  hardly makes for an edifying spectacle. Very true to life, of course, we only have to look at those who have  money or power or both in our own times to realise that it was ever thus and will presumably go on being for ever thus until humanity becomes extinct, but it's not a happy thought. And rally, just at the moment I coud have done with something a bit more uplifting.

That said I'll mark it as a hit rather than a miss because although I would never read it again, it's not a bad book in itself. 

Today is A Red Letter Day!

I wanted to write the title as Today is A day and see if people 'got it', but for some reason Blogger just didn't want to give me a way to do one single character in a different colour in a post title, so that was a funny idea gone to waste...

It's a red letter day because a man has just been and delivered a new washing machine, replacing the one that died just as we got back from our trip to Fife. I have mixed feeling about the dead machine. I cannot say it has not paid for itself because it has lasted a long time, and certainly longer than the dryer and the dishwasher which we installed at the same time and both of which have already been replaced. It didn't owe me anything. On the other hand we tried to get it repaired, much as we tried to get the dishwasher repaired when the original one gave up the ghost and with exactly the same result, we ended up having to get a new one. So much for trying to help the environment.

At least with the dishwasher we managed to get someone to come out and look at it and tell us that a repair was possible but not advisable. With the washing machine we thought we had booked someone to come and look at it - we had to go through the manufacturer's website where they took our post code, and a large amount of money, and then let us access a diary in which we could book a slot for a local engineer to come and visit. The engineer never turned up (which was actually no surprise to me as I had never believed for a minute that he even existed, let alone that he would pitch up at the front door) and when we queried this with the company they told us first that 'the repair hadn't been allocated, they would do that now' and then when we heard nothing from them and prodded them further they finally confessed that they had no engineers 'in our area (quelle surprise!) and after a couple of days they refunded our money. 

In the middle of all that we gave in to the inevitable and ordered a new washing machine which has been installed this morning. The man who installed it left about 15 minutes ago and I am already into the first of what will be many loads of laundry today. It is perhaps unfortunate then that last Friday a man did actually come when booked to install a smart meter which  is already exerting an unhealthy fascination over the OH. By the time the washing and drying is up to date he'll be having an apoplexy. But do I care? No. Because I need to wash. 

While I am, quite evidently,  much more excited about a new kitchen appliance that I really should be, I will refrain from taking and posting a photograph of it. 

Inverness and Back - With a Small Diversion

So it was up at the crack of dawn on Sunday for the early morning ferry. I don't usually know why we catch this one because it disagrees with me big time and I always suffer for hours afterwards, but on this occasion we had to be in Inverness for 4.30 and we had built a meeting with a friend on the way into the schedule. Sadly the meeting had to be called off at the last minute but the ferry was booked so  there we were, in no choice land.  

The reason for the trip was LVE OPERA! for the first time sine January. OK it was two singers, two string players and a narrator on the back of a truck in the theatre car park with a cut down version of Don Giovanni, but it was nevertheless real life singing and we needed some of that in our lives so we went to see it. 

Due to the aforementioned meeting cancellation we also managed to go to M & S and get the OH two new pairs of jeans. The Cat Lorenzo, nowhere near as agile as he was in his youth, now takes two jumps rather than one to get up on to the OH's desk and the intermediate step requires the use of claws in the OH's leg. He does not object to the small scabs and the pain, but it does make a mess of his trousers. The hope is that denim will be rather more resistant to cat claws than wool is. 

Anyway, here is the truck, before the performance started

and here it is again with personnel! The photos are rubbish because the truck had been parked with its back to the sun - great for the performers, not so good for the audience, or indeed for taking photos. 

They are  just to remind myself we went really. It was sooooo good to hear the human voice singing Mozart again, and I'm aware of how pretentious that sounds, but facts is facts and we had missed it. 

So yesterday, booked as we were  on the lunchtime  ferry to get back we had loads of time and I suggested a short detour to a small town called Portmahonack. We are always saying 'We must go' when we pass the sign for the turn off from the A9 and yesterday was the day we finally went. 

I was curious about it as it was for  long time, and for all I know still is, the home of the crime writer Anne Perry and I had often wondered what on earth made a very successful writer like her bury herself in the back of beyond. I had envisaged it as a small village, maybe five cottages and a post box, in the middle of a swathe of Forestry Commission pine, but in fact I couldn't have been more wrong. It's a sizeable village on the Moray Firth with a beautiful blue flag beach. And, improbably, an Italian Restaurant. 

We took a short walk to and on the beach 

and promised ourselves that we would come back another day when we had more time. 

In the event, a road closure and a very slow drive up the A9 courtesy of two baler lorries, a camper van and a driver in a small car unwilling to try to overtake any of them meant that we only just made it to the ferry check in, and I was so exhausted by all the excitement I took to my bed and slept for three hours. Felt better when I woke up though. 

A Reading Recommendation for Donna Tartt

 Dear Ms Tartt,

I recently read your book The Secret History. I wasn't impressed, a fact which I recorded here a few posts ago, together with just a few of the reasons I thought it was so bad. 

Here's a thing. If you want to write a 'campus' novel and tell a story of hurt and betrayal and indeed produce 'a fine study of remorse', why don't you read Naomi Wood's The Hiding Game which is a masterclass in how to do it?

Her setting, both time - the 1930s - and place - The Bauhaus Art School, set up a feeling of dread and anticipation  on their own which I suppose may be partly what gave Ms Wood the space to do what you didn't do;  people the novel with complex characters with both good and bad qualities, and totally relatable problems and dilemmas. There again  you took plenty of space for your book (it is after all, a great deal longer than The Hiding Game) so perhaps the fact that your book was full of nasty and totally non-credible and creepy people isn't the result of anything other than a lack of imagination or empathy or effort on the part of the author. Who knows? 

Anyway, maybe you would find The Hiding Game a worthwhile way to spend some of your time. 

Sincerely

Anne

For anyone else - I wholeheartedly recommend this book which is a moving exploration of guilt, remorse and how people live with their own past failings. I knew very little about The Bauhaus beyond its name and broke off reading the novel to find out more about it, so compelling does Wood make it seem. At the end I almost cried. Since only two writers have ever been able to actually make me cry, the fact that I almost cried at this is very high praise. 

In which I relate how I bought some wool ....

So Thursday of our week away was very exciting as I had an appointment to go to a shop and buy some wool. Oh for the days when we could just turn up and browse but they may not be back any time soon, so it's as well to get used to doing it another way.

The shop concerned is called The Woolly Brew and it's in Pittenweem which is one of the lovely little seaside villages on the coast of Fife. I'd been before so  I was keen to go again as they stock something I haven't been able to find elsewhere, not even at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival of blessed (or otherwise) memory. I can't say what it was because Christmas! but anyway I was very pleased to stock up on it. I did also get some wool and a kit  (OK that's more wool but with a pattern)  and a book. 

If my sister is reading this please be aware that I walked past at least three other  places that sold wool earlier in the week because I knew I was going to The Woolly Brew. 

So after I had spent -ahem!- quite a reasonable sum of money there we carried on up the coast to Craill. I would say you can't go to Craill without visiting the pottery except that we have been there before and didn't, but this time we did. The pottery they make is not really to our taste so we didn't buy any, but I did take a pic. 

We then wandered off to the harbour but didn't linger. It was a lovely sunny day but the weed was rotting ...

The last time we visited Craill we had seen a very nice looking place to eat but it had been absolutely full; this time we were lucky and there was space. So we lunched al fresco, overlooking the sea and the food was indeed very good. 

I forget what the OH had but I had a brie cranberry and ham panini, and then I couldn't resist having some of the plum and apple tart to follow. The cheesecake in the background was the OH's. Raspberry and white chocolate. I sampled it and it was lovely, but very rich. 

And this was how the ice in my drink looked!! 

Quite fun I thought. 

I took a lot of pictures in Craill because the architecture is very characteristic of this part of Scotland and I like it 

And considering how warm it was, walking past the white houses with the blue trim you could almost have convinced yourself you were in Andalucia. It was a very lovely day.

Good Timing - for once!

 Of course when we were down in Fife we wanted to zap over to Glasgow to see Son No. 2. We had originally planned to go on the Wednesday but for various reasons that got changed to Tuesday. And thank goodness it did, as new restrictions on meeting people in Greater Glasgow were brought into force over Tuesday night and if we'd left it util Wednesday we would not have been able to go. I do wonder if we would have gone anyway and sometimes I think we would and sometimes I think we wouldn't but anyway we weren't put to the test. We didn't go out while we were there except for the OH going off to Tesco for some needful household thing.

On Wednesday I had arranged to see my Central Belt friends in Dunfermline. Most of the things worth lookng at in Dunfermline were shut and it poured with rain most of the day. We did manage a walk through Pittencrieff Park which was lovely and would be even lovelier in dry weather, a somewhat uncomfortable lunch in a very full cafe, a rummage through some charity and vintage shops, a trip to a wool and fabric shop where I bought wool to be knitted up into a Christmas present and a very nice quiet coffee and scone in a very calm warm and dry pub at the end of the afternoon. The OH took himself off to the Museum of Flight at Haddington and enjoyed himself hugely; much more than he would have done had I gone with him and got bored after the third aeroplane. 

He had to book a slot to go and this was something we found difficult about the whole holiday. It was very difficult to be spontaneous about anything because most things you wanted to visit, if open at all, had to have a time arranged in advance. Even the wool shop I visited in Pittenweem - but of that more anon. 

It wasn't weather for taking photos but to show willing here's the mocha I had in the pub. 

In other news we are supposed to be having a visit from a man to repair the washing machine today. He has not contacted us with a time of arrival and there has been no sign of him.  I am aware that it is not quite one o' clock and he has the whole afternoon in which to turn up. This dos not stop me having a sinking feeling that he is not gong to be turning up at all. Well, time will tell. 

The Plastic Box Project

Way way back before C19 had even been heard of, in that dead time between Christmas and New Year I re-organised some of my wool stash, and in particular I put most of my old DK wool (some of it inherited from my mother, who died in 2004) into a big plastic box and pushed it under the guest room bed, with the idea that I would 'do something with it, one day'. 

Here it is 

At the beginning of August I decided for some reason that 'one day' had come and that I would devote all my knitting time, bar the time I needed for my Mystery Blanket squares, to knitting up the wool from the box. 

And I did. I knitted cardigans

and burial gowns 

and lots and lots of hats ....

and now the box looks like this

It was an interesting exercise and I'm glad I used up so much wool, but I did rather run out of steam towards the end. So  I won't do it for a whole month again, or at least not for a while. I'm not averse to maybe a week once a month to get the box emptied - I mean how good would that be? Something to aim for. But not just yet. 

I did knit some more socks ...

 and here they are 

and given the colour they could only be for the OH. He's very pleased with them. 

I have five more pairs I want to knit between now and Christmas. We'll see how that goes.

100 Books to Read poster Number 17

 

Just breaking up the extended 'what we did on our holidays' posts by catching up with the reading poster.

This one was The Secret History by Donna Tartt. This is  the second book of Ms Tartt's that I have started and the first one I have finished. I can't help feeling that if this one hadn't appeared on the poster then the score line would be a symmetrical Started 2 Given up on 2. But there it was and it had to be finished.

There were many many rhapsodical quotes on the cover of this book from people whose opinion I generally respect so I can only assume that it is better than I thought it was. Apparently amongst other things  it's a fine and meticulous study of remorse. Really? Well OK then. 

There were many things I didn't like about this book and the first one was its length.  It was ridiculously B-L-O-A-T-E-D.  A decent editor could have cut it by about 50% and the book would have been better for it. The second was that not one person in it was likeable. When did it become acceptable, no, fashionable even, to write novels in which no-one has a single redeeming feature? I loathed everyone in this book, including the narrator, and could only wish that the remorse had led to a mass suicide at the end, instead of the reader being presented with a lame epilogue which told you what everyone was doing, including several characters whose part in the narrative had been so minor that I had forgotten who they were, some twenty years later. Yawn. 

And most importantly the two central events were just so non-credible. Especially the first. Obviously this is a no spoiler space, on the off chance that anyone who reads this might be spurred on to read the book itself, so I can't say what it was. Except that it was risible. 

Reading this represents quite  a lot of hours of my life that  won't get back, and I rather resent that.  In the spirit of searching out small mercies however I did at least get it from the library so I didn't waste any money buying it. It is though a resounding Miss. 

That's not a piece of ruby jewellery!

No, it's not, it's a set of Le Creuset cast iron pans. On the second day of our Fife break, we went to St Andrews. St Andrews is small, old and posh. A perfect place we thought, to source a piece of ruby jewellery to celebrate our anniversary. 

I don't know quite how it happened but we didn't find a jewellers all the time we were there. We certainly seemed to have found the centre, and we saw some very nice shops and walked a very long way, but jewellers were there none. 

What we did find was a kitchenware shop. A kitchenware shop that had a set of Le Creuset pans on offer The pans which the OH has been hankering after for a very long time. I resisted for a bit. I really don't like the bright orange colour. But there you go. As my mother used to say they were a good buy. My father generally added 'yes a goodbye to £x'.

Happy Anniversary all over again to the OH. 

Ouch!

This isn't the post I was expecting to write today. Last night I started experiencing very severe pain at the top of my left leg. Assuming I had been siting awkwardly I manoeuvred myself up from the sofa, not without some ooos, and ows deserving of an Oscar nomination had I not been actually feeling the pain and not  acting, and took myself off to bed expecting everything to have sorted itself out by morning. Alas, after an uncomfortable night things were no better so I rang the doctor for an appointment for a  phone consultation.

He diagnosed back trouble, told me to take painkillers, keep active and expect it to be better within 1-2 weeks. He also mentioned losing some weight, although he added 'that's a long term measure'. Too right it's a long term measure, it's so long term I seem to have been trying to do it for three decades without signal success. 

Oh well, once the back's better it's try again time I suppose. Sitting in a chair, or more to the point getting in and out of a chair is quite difficult just now so it's a sort post before I lock into position! 

Ruby Anniversary

We, or rather I, had booked a champagne afternoon tea to celebrate our anniversary. It was at somewhere relatively posh ie this place,  Rufflets  They could only offer us a 2.30 time slot which is a bit early for tea but we decided we could skip lunch. It's also an awkward sort of time for doing anything very much in the morning especially as it was about 30 miles from where we were staying so we decided we would have an easy morning exploring the 8 acres of grounds which our accommodation boasted. 

I've found previously that acres are not as big as you think they are but we had a pleasant time wandering around the gardens and the small woodland. There was also a ruined castle that you weren't  allowed to go near to, but obviously near enough to take pictures. 

We came across the property owner in our wanderings and had a brief chat with him. During the course of this we mentioned that we should have be in Australia and I expressed the opinion that there was probably nowhere in the world worth going to if, by doing so, you ran the risk of dying. 'Well apart from Afghanistan' he said. That wasn't a conversation I particularly wanted to carry on since our opinions of British military involvement in various paces in the world seemed unlikely to coincide so we left it at that. 

I was intersted to see how the tea lived up to our previous experience of posh tea at Gleneagles, which I blogged about at the time. Tobe fair to Rufflets they were struggling with the exigencies of Covid winch Gleneages at the time of our visit wasn't, so the comparison isn't totally fair.  Rufflets scored on music (there wasn't any) and speed of service. Gleneagles won on temperature (Ruffllets was freezing) and atmosphere, since, due to social distancing, tea this time was served in a huge function room with about six tables, very widely spaced,  in it. As for the food there wasn't much in it; for what it's worth I preferred Rufflets scones, but their sandwiches had only too obviously been just that moment before serving been taken out of a chiller cabinet. So overall Gleneagles edged it, but might not have in  normal times. 

Here's a picture of what we got. 

and we had a fun time  reminiscing, mainly about holidays and opera performances. As you do. 

Aaaaaannnnnnddddd - we're back!

I have to say that in general our trip to Fife was very enjoyable. It must have had something going for it as the photo app on my laptop told me this morning I had taken 106 photographs while we were away. Who knew?

A few photos will appear here naturally in due course, as I relish the opportunity to blog about something other than books, tv, and knitting, and I'll start small with a photo of the cottage we rented. 

Much of the benefit of being away dissipated the moment we set foot back in the house as we were met firstly by an overpowering smell of dead rodent, and secondly by a pool of water in the middle of the kitchen floor. This is only partly explained by the fact that the OH appears to have left the kitchen tap running while we gone - thank goodness we're not on a metred water supply.

We mopped up last night, while checking for signs of water elsewhere - table top, work benches etc but it seems only to be that one place on the floor. Extensive searches have so far failed to ferret out (ha!) the dead rodent but we have hopes that when the cats return  from the cattery they will go straight to the place ... perhaps we're being  a bit too optimistic there.

To add to the gaiety of nations the washing machine seems to have given up the ghost this morning, with a full load of washing inside it. 

How's your weekend going?