We had snow and ice overnight, although by the time we’d noticed it the rain had turned it into slush. I think that’s a sort of metaphor for 2021 so far, the promise of something good that doesn’t quite turn out to be as pleasant as we might have hope for! It would be nice to have a couple of proper snow days though, it would redeem the winter.
I took a couple of pictures on the way to school with Lucy this morning. There was evidence of a strong snowfall on the grass and the cars. It looked like there was an inch, or maybe more, of snow. The rain had removed it all from the ground though.
Creative Writing
I finished off a short story for the Write Club Surrey January session. The Mother’s Dream is a creation myth for the world I built for Fierce, the fantasy novel I finished in November 2020.The world starts off in ice and darkness, and warms up as it is populated and the movement of things heats it with friction. Eventually one of the goddesses sets a small sun going.
Repairs
Somewhat mysteriously the Kenwood Chef stopped working a few days ago. I used it on New Year’s Day, and the next time I tried to use it nothing happened when I turned it on. So I watched a YouTube video on how to disassemble it. Having done so, along with some general web searching, I identified that the controller was burnt out. Very literally, you can see the carbon scoring in the picture.So we found a replacement part. It looked like an easy fix given the modular nature of the components.
Unfortunately in trying to find a better price for it I managed to get slightly side tracked. The link I ended up on looked like it was the same one, but turned out to be for a slightly different model of Kenwood Chef. So when I had it all apart to fit the replacement I discovered that it didn’t fit. So it’s all packed up to be returned, and we need to wait longer for the replacement to arrive.
Food – National Shortbread Day
According to Lucy today is National Shortbread Day. I guess in honour of all the packets and boxes of shortbread doing the rounds for New Year. At school today Lucy made shortbread, and it was very nice indeed. It went down well after dinner. I do really wish she’d been able to make more, or at least brought the recipe home too.
Another Scots delicacy that I managed today was some fried clootie dumpling. There was the end of a piece I’d made in the bottom of the bread tin. It was fairly small, and I was very hungry, so I decided to shallow fry it with a small knob of margarine. The margarine wasn’t the right stuff for that, butter would have been much better. That said, I suspect that when I had this as a kid it was probably fried in a mixture of bacon and Lorne sausage fat. Practically lard. The margarine burnt a bit, but the dumpling was still good to eat.
Supplies Arrive
While I was digging the patch in front of the hut in a search for the old concrete path, Alexander and Lucy decided to clean the trampoline. Armed with a bottle of washing up liquid, a couple of brushes and the garden hose they bounced and scrubbed the trampoline. As always it quickly turned into a water fight. Tracy and I threw buckets of water at the kids and they sprayed us with the hose.
Lots and lots of fun on a lovely warm day.
I then daisy chained both the garden extension cables so that the hedge trimmer reached the back corner of the garden. Then I cut and raked up the brambles and all the other weeds until the light failed. It took two or three passes, raking up in between each one, to clear the area. I think I completely cleared about a dozen square metres. Here’s the after photo that matches the before photo above.
I saved a half dozen nettle plants for an experiment I want to do with Lucy and Alexander later in the week. I’d like to use the leaves to make nettle tea, and the stems to make string.Once I’d cleared enough space I decided to start prep for the new compost heap. This started with a bringing an old rug to throw over the fence to stop things growing through it, and also to contain the compost on this side. I then dumped the wheelbarrow load of clay soil and used it to flatten out the slight slope at the very back.
We’ve got several piles of woody garden rubbish, and of brambles, that I don’t want to compost. The larger one has been building on our burning circle since the end of last year. The other piles only exist because we’ve tried to avoid burning garden rubbish.
Tonight we decided to give in and have a fire. Alexander started it by flicking a lit match at the pile. It caught really quickly.
While I was keeping an eye on it Tracy and Lucy came out to watch, and they brought marshmallows with them. The fire was a bit too hot to start with, but it soon died down. We spent a happy half hour watching the flames and toasting marshmallows.
Eventually it was time to go in, and I turned the garden hose on it.
The zoom session was pretty chaotic. We played pictionary, with a random word generator. Each scout took it in turn to draw, and their patrol had to guess. It sort of worked, but my connection was rather iffy and I had to join back in a few times.
